Last April this Blog had commented on the future of the Tridentine Mass in Malta, and whether Traditionis custodes would still apply.
Some days ago, it was announced that Tridentine Mass will be celebrated by Cardinal Raymond Burke at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica on 25 October, 2025. This represents an important return of this rite to the Basilica after it was suspended in 2022 due to restrictions issued by Pope Francis' 2021.
Yesterday, Rorate Coeli published the text being reproduced below:
From an excerpt of the new book-interview with Elise Ann Allen, of Crux, released today -- a direct quote from the Pope's response:
[Elise Ann Allen]: Regarding the study group on liturgy, what is being studied? How much of the reason for establishing this was related to divisions surrounding the Traditional Latin Mass, for example, or issues such as the new Amazonian rite?
[Leo XIV]: My understanding of what the group came out of is primarily from issues that have to do with the inculturation of the liturgy. How to continue the process of making the liturgy more meaningful within a different culture, within a specific culture, in a specific place at any given time. I think that was the primary issue.
There is another issue, which is also another hot-button issue, which I have already received a number of requests and letters [about]: The question about, people always say ‘the Latin Mass.’ Well, you can say Mass in Latin right now. If it’s the Vatican II rite there’s no problem. Obviously, between the Tridentine Mass and the Vatican II Mass, the Mass of Paul VI, I’m not sure where that’s going to go. It’s obviously very complicated.
I do know that part of that issue, unfortunately, has become – again, part of a process of polarization – people have used the liturgy as an excuse for advancing other topics. It’s become a political tool, and that’s very unfortunate. I think sometimes the, say, ‘abuse’ of the liturgy from what we call the Vatican II Mass, was not helpful for people who were looking for a deeper experience of prayer, of contact with the mystery of faith that they seemed to find in the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. Again, we’ve become polarized, so that instead of being able to say, well, if we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?
I have not had the chance to really sit down with a group of people who are advocating for the Tridentine rite. There’s an opportunity coming up soon, and I’m sure there will be occasions for that. But that is an issue that I think also, maybe with synodality, we have to sit down and talk about. It’s become the kind of issue that’s so polarized that people aren’t willing to listen to one another, oftentimes. I’ve heard bishops talk to me, they’ve talked to me about that, where they say, ‘we invited them to this and that and they just won’t even hear it’. They don’t even want to talk about it. That’s a problem in itself. It means we’re into ideology now, we’re no longer into the experience of church communion. That’s one of the issues on the agenda.
