This Mass, which was celebrated in St. Henry Cathedral in Helsinki, will move to St. Mary's Church, a newer church located 5 kilometers from the Finnish capital.
The decision was made by the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, considering that the cathedral as “a model for the entire local Church” and therefore a “sign of unity,” could not be an appropriate place for the celebration of the traditional rite.
As Zenit rightly writes, the traditional rite, whose reappearance in the post-Vatican II liturgical space had been authorized by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum “had found its place in the majestic St. Henry Cathedral, a neo-Gothic church deeply rooted in the Catholic history of Finland.”
The Wikipedia entry recalls that the cathedral was built between 1858 and 1860 in a neo-Gothic style: it is dedicated to St. Henry of Uppsala, a bishop who came from England to Sweden during the 12th century and died in Finland.
Zenit adds that “the cathedral first served the Catholics of the Russian Imperial Army in a predominantly Lutheran country.”
Temporarily Authorized Masses
Zenit recalls that the Dicastery for Divine Worship authorized 57 parishes in the world to celebrate the traditional Mass in 2020, but the statement is incomplete.
These 57 authorizations represent a temporary provision of a parish church to celebrate the traditional Mass in a diocese, in the absence of another available location.
They require the placet of the Dicastery for the Liturgy - the bishop cannot act alone - and must be withdrawn as soon as another solution is found.
This Mass must not appear anywhere in the parish papers, must not be made known to general parishioners, and must not even be seen, for fear that it will attract new people.
According to the Dicastery for the Liturgy, this expulsion of the traditional Mass from the Helsinki Cathedral is therefore logical.
Zenit adds that in Finland “a country whose Catholic population is less than 20,000 faithful, this decision has a significant impact, given that the Tridentine Mass is a liturgical expression unique in this context.”
Let us recall the first characteristic of the anti-liturgical heresy according to Dom Prosper Guéranger: “The first characteristic of the anti-liturgical heresy is the hatred of Tradition in the formulas of divine worship.”
May Cardinal Arthur Roche and the Dicastery he directs, meditate on this reflection by the great restorer of the liturgy in the 19th century.