Vatican allowed fewer than 60 parish churches worldwide to offer Latin Mass in 2022

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Vatican allowed fewer than 60 parish churches worldwide to offer Latin Mass in 2022
Due to Pope Francis’ sweeping restrictions on the Latin Mass, fewer than 60 parishes were granted permission to celebrate the traditional liturgy in 2022, most of them in the US, according to a new report from the Vatican’s liturgy office.



Cardinal Arthur Roche, February 2023.
Screenshot/Mazur/cbcew.org.uk/Flickr

Jul 26, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Newly published statistics from the Vatican’s liturgy office reveal that just 57 parishes were granted permission to offer the traditional Mass in 2022, following the 2021 publication of Traditionis Custodes.

In a July 26 posting on the website of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for Divine Worship (CDW), the full details of the 2022 activities of the dicastery were outlined in a document over 500 pages long. Among the summary of decrees issued by the CDW was the complete list of parish churches granted permission to host a traditional Mass.

Less than 60 parish churches across the globe were allowed to host a traditional Mass, the majority of which were in the U.S.

Prior to the promulgation of Pope Francis’ sweeping restrictions on the traditional Mass via Traditionis Custodes (TC) in 2021, large swathes of provision of the traditional Mass was provided in parish churches, offered either by diocesan priests or by visiting priests from traditional communities.

The stipulations of TC argued to remove authority from the bishops and place it in the hands of the CDW – led by the anti-traditional Cardinal Arthur Roche. Subsequently, bishops were ordered to designate churches in the diocese for the celebration of the traditional Mass, but prohibited from allowing the liturgy to be offered in a parish church.

Article 3 of the motu proprio reads:

The bishop of the diocese in which until now there exist one or more groups that celebrate according to the Missal antecedent to the reform of 1970 … is to designate one or more locations where the faithful adherents of these groups may gather for the eucharistic celebration (not however in the parochial churches and without the erection of new personal parishes);

Any use of a parish church for the ancient liturgy was reserved to the judgement of the CDW, under the terms of TC.

Six months after TC was released, Roche expanded the restrictions by virtue of a December 2021 Responsa ad dubia. One slight concession in his text, however, was the limited use of a parish church for the celebration of the Latin Mass, only when “it is not possible to find a church, oratory or chapel which is available to accommodate the faithful.”

Roche demanded that a diocesan bishop must “request” for a parish church to be used, “only if it is established that it is impossible to use another church, oratory or chapel. The assessment of this impossibility must be made with the utmost care.”

Further appearing to ostracize devotees of the traditional liturgy, Roche’s Responsa added that any such Latin Masses in the parish church “should not be included in the parish Mass schedule” and “should not be held at the same time as the pastoral activities of the parish community.” However, he claimed that there was no intention to “marginalise the faithful” devoted to the traditional Mass.

Explaining why the ban on using a parish church had been stipulated in TC, Roche’s 2021 Responsa stated that:

The exclusion of the parish church is intended to affirm that the celebration of the Eucharist according to the previous rite, being a concession limited to these groups, is not part of the ordinary life of the parish community.

The CDW’s 2022 statistics present a stark representation of the manner in which the traditional liturgy is now offered, in comparison to the pre-TC days. However, restrictions on the Mass and removal of permissions for use of churches hosting the Latin Mass have intensified since the close of 2022.

Current rumors, largely unsubstantiated except by two outlets, suggest that Roche and his CDW second-in-command Archbishop Vittorio Viola, OFM, are attempting to obtain papal approval for even more stringent restrictions on the ancient liturgy.

In response to these rumors, large-scale lay initiatives have been launched with leading figures of both British and American society petitioning Pope Francis not to enact any more punitive measures on the traditional liturgy.

Such ventures have received the support of Mexico’s retired Cardinal Juan Sandoval as well as San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

“The widely diverse coalition of signers of the petition to Pope Francis demonstrates that, even beyond its spiritual value, the Traditional Latin Mass is a cultural treasure that has inspired artistic creativity of every kind & in every age, building what we know as Western Civilization,” the archbishop of San Francisco wrote on X.