Rorate Caeli

URGENT: Pope tells Italian Bishops he plans to abolish the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (Updated)

Update (May 26): Rorate's additional sources in Rome have confirmed this Wednesday that Francis has indeed a text on Summorum Pontificum lined up, which has been developed for months, but what is not known at this point is if the text is just about a more limited take on the Summorum application questionnaire (first revealed by us in the spring of 2020) or about an overhaul of Summorum Pontificum in general: drafts could be dealing with both matters. It is also not impossible for a text to come out of calculated ambiguity, in the general denial/non-denial terms favored by this pontificate.

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An urgent news item by our friends at Messa in Latino, the Pope spoke on the matter yesterday to the Italian bishops during the portion of the Italian Conference of Bishops' meeting in which the assembly was closed to the media:


It is, for the moment, still fragmentary news, coming from our multiple sources within the CEI [Italian Conference of Bishops] and bishops, but it seems that yesterday (May 24, 2021) the Pope, addressing the Italian bishops at the opening of the annual assembly of the CEI ( and in a subsequent meeting with a group of them), announced the imminent reform for the worse of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.

 

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From what is known, it would be a return to the indult -- with a prior authorization of the bishop [as under the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei], or of the Vatican -- with all that it entails, that is, a reintroduction of the prohibition of the celebration according to the Missal of St John XXIII, so many denials of authorizations, and the ghettoization, in practice, of the priests and faithful attached to the old rite. After Moses, the Liberator, Pharaoh returns. [Source]