Aparecida, Brazil, May 18, 2007 / 10:24 am
The president of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, said this week “the time has come to facilitate” access to the liturgy “according to the liturgical books promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.”
“The Holy Father has the intention of extending to the entire Latin Church the possibility of celebrating the Holy Mass and the Sacraments according to the liturgical books promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962,” the Colombian cardinal said during a speech at the 5th General Conference of the Latin American Bishops’ Council.
“There exists today a new and renewed interest in this liturgy, which was never abolished and which, as we have said, is considered a treasure.” “For the same reason, the Holy Father thinks that the time has come to make this liturgy available to the faithful…making it an extraordinary form of the one Roman rite,” he said.
In this way, Cardinal Castrillon added, “the Holy Father wishes to conserve the immense spiritual, cultural and aesthetic treasures linked to the ancient liturgy. The recovery of this treasure is united to the current liturgy of the Church, which is by no means less precious.”
“This generous offer of the Vicar of Christ,” he noted, aims to put “all of the treasures of the Latin liturgy, which for centuries has nourished the spiritual lives of so many generations of faithful Catholics, at the disposal of the Church.”