| By Alberto Carosa | |
| Rome Correspondent | |
| ______________________ | |
|
10/10/13--The
CISP (International Coordination Summorum Pontificum)
has announced that His Eminence Dario, Cardinal
Castrillón Hoyos will be celebrating Pontifical High
Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday 26 October at 11
o’clock during the pilgrimage of the people of Summorum
Pontificum to Rome.
Holy Mass on 26 October will allow Diocesan and
Religious Priests, Seminarians, and the faithful among
the people of Summorum Pontificum to show Cardinal
Castrillón Hoyos their gratitude and affection for
everything he has done in the service of the Church,
especially at the time of the preparation of the Motu
Proprio Summorum Pontificum, during which His Eminence
was a witness and of which he is the living memory.
The CISP especially wishes also to express their
gratitude to His Eminence for coming to say Mass,
especially since the 26th of October is the
sixty-first anniversary of his ordination to the
Priesthood, which he received in the Basilica of the
Holy Apostles in Rome on 26 October 1952.
This Pontifical High Mass of thanksgiving at St Peter’s
will be one of the central points of the Pilgrimage,
during which the eternal youth of the Extraordinary Form
of the Roman Rite will be seen by all, and by means of
which the people of Summorum Pontificum will contribute
to the missionary zeal of the New Evangelization.
This is the fifth pontifical in the extraordinary rite
to be celebrated in St Peter’s Basilica since the
promulgation of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum in
2007, and the second one personally celebrated by His
Eminence Dario Castrillón Hoyos, after his first
celebration on November 5th, 2011, on the occasion of
the General Assembly of Una Voce-FIUV in Rome. In his
homily the Cardinal forcefully decried “the widespread
practice of liturgical abuses in the aftermath of the
Council” as having produced “deep wounds in the Church”
and blamed what he termed the so-called “spirit of the
Council” for being exploited as “a tool to uphold
spurious claims often aimed at imposing disturbing ways
of thinking and acting” (Cf. Vatican Insider, 5 November
2011).
This senior prelate is also on record for having been
probably the staunchest supporter of Benedict XVI in his
efforts to reinstate the old rite, which the Cardinal
aptly said should be more correctly called the Gregorian
rite. All the more so if we consider that he did not
limit himself only to preach but also practiced what he
was preaching, and his forthcoming celebration in St.
Peter’s will be only the latest among many occasions on
which he celebrated the Gregorian rite.
“It was a real nightmare putting the Summorum Pontificum
into practice”, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos painfully
recalled during a book presentation on the opposition to
Summorum Pontificum in late 2011 (cf. Vatican Insider,
October 2011). This gives us an idea of what he had to
endure and how daunting the task was, especially because
opposition to the Motu Proprio is rooted in ignorance,
he claimed, “of what we have lost and theologically
should be viewed in light of the Holy Ghost’s action
through the successor of Peter. And the Holy Father
wanted to give back to the world such great treasure,
the enormous spiritual richness of the ancient liturgy,
a powerful tool of sanctification”.
A treasure which is a gift of God and therefore should
be made available not only to traditional minded
church-goers or the groups who were asking for it, but
to all the faithful, and here again we should be
grateful to the great courage of the Cardinal, who on 14
June 2008 forcefully told a press conference in London
that Pope Benedict would not like to see only “many
ordinary parishes” celebrating the Gregorian Rite, but
“all the parishes”, which demands that all seminarians
be taught how to celebrate it.
This has to be seen against the backdrop of Cardinal
Castrillon Hoyos, that very same day, celebrating a
solemn pontifical in the Gregorian rite in the Cathedral
of Westminster for the first time in three decades. To
give an idea of the above “nightmare”, neither the
archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac
Murphy-O'Connor nor any other incumbent bishops were in
attendance. The cathedral itself, however, was bursting
at the seams, with over 1,500 faithful including so many
young families in attendance. At that time, over sixty
young priests from around the country had joined a
summer course offered by Merton College in Oxford to
learn how to celebrate the Gregorian rite.
On another occasion, His Eminence is on record for
having described as a “time of grace” the period “that
we are living since the enforcement of the motu proprio
Summorum Pontificum of the Holy Father Benedict XVI”
(cf. Vatican Insider, 4 November 2012).
All of this is precisely the spirit in which we are
called to live
the second pilgrimage of the people of Summorum
Pontificum to Rome, due in 24-37 October 2013, to cap
the Year of Faith.
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