Purge at the Congregation for Divine Worship
November 7, 2014
Monsignor Anthony Ward and Monsignor Juan Miguel Ferrer learned the day before yesterday, November 5, practically at the same moment that the nomination of their successor was being made at the Daily Bollettino of the Holy See Press Office, that they were not reconfirmed in their function as undersecretaries of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and that Fr. Corrado Maggioni, until that moment head of bureau [Capo Ufficio] in this same Congregation was named Undersecretary.
It must be be made known that Msgr. Corrado Maggioni, a steadfast Bugninist, a great friend of Abp. Piero Marini, had been named to the Office of Liturgical Celebrations [of the Supreme Pontiff] at the time of the "rearrangement" of this office's personnel at the beginning of the current pontificate.
It must also be made known that Msgr. Juan Miguel Ferrer Grenesche, who had been Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of Toledo [Spain], a great savant of liturgical matters, was the right-hand man of Cardinal Cañizares, [when the latter was] Archbishop of Toledo, who, when named Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship by his friend Pope Benedict XVI, had called him to be at his side. As favorable to the Extraordinary Form as Don Antonio, his Cardinal, Don Juan Miguel is THE expert on the Mozarabic Rite. This ancient Visigothic Latin rite, dating from before the introduction of the Roman Rite in Spain and preserved thanks to the Muslim invasions, is still celebrated in some rare spots in Toledo and Salamanca. It had, of course, been massacred by Bugnini's reform, from which nothing escaped, not even the last evidences of this venerable liturgy of Saint Isidore of Seville! Msgr. Ferrer has therefore accomplished an intelligent "reform of the reform" [in the Mozarabic Rite] reintroducing in it in scholarly fashion venerable texts....Juan Miguel Ferrer, another Ratzingerian head that rolls down, after those of Abp. Morga Izurubieta, Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy, of Msgr. Alberto González Chaves, of the Congregation for Bishops, etc. [Source, in French]
As for Msgr. Ward, as is well known, he was a key figure in the only major liturgical advance of the now defunct "Reform of the Reform", the new English translation of the Paul VI missal.
