
CV NEWS FEED // Cardinal Robert Sarah, former head of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, criticized “banal” and “noisy” liturgies this week, and called for a return to quiet and traditional liturgies at Mass.
Sarah’s comments were made during his homily on December 4 while celebrating Mass for the five-day-long Congress of African Liturgists in Dakar, Senegal.
“We are witnessing today, especially in the West, a dismantling of the values of faith and piety…and a destruction of the forms of the Mass,” Sarah said, according to Africa News.
Sarah went on to say that the liturgy in Africa often becomes too “distorted” by cultural elements, which further destroys the form of the Mass.
“We work to sprinkle the liturgy with African and Asian elements, thus distorting the Paschal mystery that we celebrate. We place so much emphasis on these cultural elements that our celebrations sometimes last six hours,” he said. “Our liturgies are often too banal and too noisy, too African and less Christian.”
Sarah’s comments in his homily were not the first time that he called for a return to traditional liturgies. In 2017, Sarah published a book called The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise. In 2021, he posted a passage from the book on X and again called for reverence during the Mass.
“I am an African. Let me say clearly: the liturgy is not the place to promote my culture. Rather, it is the place where my culture is baptised, where my culture is taken up into the Divine,” he posted on X.
In his homily for the Congress of African Liturgists’ Mass on December 4, Sarah praised the Congress and called it “historic and of vital importance for the future of the Church of Jesus Christ in Africa.”
“The liturgy is vital to the Christian religion, and these liturgical specialists are here not just as experts, but under the watchful eye of God, they want to help us to live our faith and our Christian religion to the full,” Sarah said.
According to ACI Africa, Sarah said that:
60 years after the promulgation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, African liturgists are organizing this first international congress of African liturgists to compare their thoughts on liturgical practice and the fidelity of African communities to the Christian tradition and the authentic values of African cultures.
“Let us pray, dear brothers and sisters, that we may rediscover the Trinitarian origin of the liturgy,” Sarah added.
