Rorate Caeli

Another monastery rediscovers its traditional Rite

Vyšší Brod (photo source)
One of the least-known major news stories of 2012 for the "world of Tradition" in the Latin Rite has been the return of the Cistercian monastery of Vyšší Brod in the Czech Republic (see also their more updated Czech website) to the traditional Cistercian Rite (as it existed prior to Vatican II).

Although the monastery's own website seems to show that it still uses the Novus Ordo, we have received confirmation that the monastery now has its daily Conventual Mass (Sunday to Saturday) and its whole Divine Office according to the Traditional Cistercian Rite. We expect that the website will eventually be amended to reflect this change.

Vyšší Brod belongs to the Ordo Cisterciensis (O.Cist) or Cistercians of the Common Observance.



Mass in the Monastery. (Source)

Vyšší Brod is now the third monastery in the Benedictine tradition (after the Trappist monastery of Mariawald and the Benedictine monastery in Norcia) to make the switch, in the years since the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum, from being all "Reformed Rite" to being predominantly or exclusively Traditional Rite.

The following is a video of a Pontifical Mass celebrated in Vyšší Brod by Dom Josef Vollberg OCSO, Abbot of Mariawald, on December 15 of this year.