Pope Benedict XVI is fully committed to a plan to allow broader use of the pre-conciliar Latin liturgy, and a papal document confirming that policy will soon be released, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos has confirmed.Cardinal Castrillon is the president of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, the Vatican office charged with outreach to traditionalist Catholics.
In a May 16 talk to CELAM, the Latin American bishops' conference, the Colombian cardinal reported that the Holy Father "thinks the time has come" to liberalize access to the Tridentine Mass.
Although he did not offer a specific date for the announcement, Cardinal Castrillon said that a long-awaited papal document, a motu proprio encouraging greater use of the traditional Latin liturgy, will be released in the near future.
"The Holy Father wants to preserve the immense spiritual, cultural, and aesthetic treasures tied to the old liturgy," the cardinal said. He said that the Tridentine rite-- which, he emphasized, has never been abolished-- will be used alongside the post-conciliar liturgy.
Cardinal Castrillon noted that these two forms of the Latin rite are already being used in the diocese of Campos, Brazil, under the terms of an agreement that allowed the reconciliation of a breakaway traditionalist group there.
The "good fruits" of the Brazilian accord, he said, could be a model for a new effort to repair ties between the Holy See and the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, the group founded by the last Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
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