Cardinal Sarah suggests Church lacks authority to suppress Latin Mass

Cardinal Robert Sarah questioned whether the Church has authority to suppress the Traditional Latin Mass and urged bishops to be more open to the faithful devoted to it.

(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Robert Sarah has indicated he is unsure the Catholic Church has the authority to suppress the Traditional Latin Mass which has nourished so many saints and the general faithful for over 1,600 years. “I don’t know what authority we have to prevent a liturgy that has been celebrated for centuries,” the Guinean cardinal told Diane Montagna in a June 29 interview, released on Thursday.

“Pope Benedict said that what was sacred in the past remains sacred today,” Sarah reaffirmed. “And besides, this Tridentine liturgy is 1,600 years old. We cannot say that what has been done for 1,600 years is no longer valid now.”

Construing a March message from Pope Leo XIV to the bishops of France as a call to be more open to accommodating the growing Traditional Latin Mass parishes in their nation, the African prelate said this approach should be normative with bishops across the world. “I think that what was written to the French bishops must apply to all bishops: be more open, so as not to create division for no reason,” Sarah advised. “I think we should encourage all the bishops to be more fatherly, more open, because even within the Catholic Church we have many rites – the Mozarabic rite, many, also the Ambrosian rite.

So, I don’t see why we must be so radical as to suppress it, that is, to prevent it.” Sarah went on to endorse the idea of allowing Traditionis Custodes – the 2021 moto proprio by which the late Pope Francis severely restricted the Vetus Ordo – to “disappear gradually,” as opposed to it being formally abrogated by the Pope, since “the Church is a continuity. What cancels is not a valid text, because the Church is a continuity.”

This story is developing ...