Cardinal: Liberalized use of Tridentine Mass already is bearing fruit

Published: 2008-03-28

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's outreach to traditionalist Catholics by liberalizing the use of the Tridentine Mass already is bearing fruit, said Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos. The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei," which coordinates care for traditionalist Catholics, said that thanks to the pope's action "not a few have asked to return to full communion, and some already have returned." In an interview published in the March 28 edition of L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Cardinal Castrillon said 30 cloistered nuns in Spain have "already been recognized and regularized" and "there are cases of American, German and French groups" who have begun the process. He added, "There are individual priests and many laypeople who contact us, write to us and call us for a reconciliation and, on the other side, there are many other faithful who demonstrate their gratitude to the pope" for his July letter authorizing wider use of the liturgy from the 1962 Roman Missal. In his letter, the pope said the Mass from the Roman Missal in use since 1970 remains the ordinary form, while celebration of the Tridentine Mass is the extraordinary form.

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