Image by Alison Girone
CV NEWS FEED // Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco this week expressed his support of a recent open letter from Catholics and non-Catholics from the Americas to Pope Francis imploring him to not further restrict the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass.
Dana Gioia, who formerly chaired the National Endowment for the Arts, spearheaded the letter, which artists, authors, and composers, among others, have signed.
According to a recent email news release from the Benedict XVI Institute, which published the letter, Archbishop Cordileone shared a statement praising the letter as “extraordinary.”
He stated that when he first learned about the letter’s organization, he “knew it would be compellingly well-written.”
“This is an extraordinary statement from some great artists and other cultural influencers about the value and inspiration they have received from the Traditional Latin Mass,” he concluded: “I am grateful that faithful Catholics who make clear that they love the Latin Mass but love Jesus Christ and His Church more, are making their voices lovingly heard.”
Gioia and the other signatories’ appeal comes shortly after a similar letter, known as the Sir James MacMillan letter, was published, imploring the Vatican not to further restrict the Latin Mass. Both letters have come amid rumors about a document not yet published at the Vatican that would almost entirely restrict the celebration of the Latin Mass in dioceses around the world.
Archbishop Cordileone previously expressed his support of the Sir James MacMillan letter. Recently, the Archbishop himself wrote about the power that the Latin Mass has to evangelize through its beauty.
The more recent letter stated that the Sir James MacMillan letter inspired Gioia and her fellow signatories to publish an appeal of their own.
“We join our voices with theirs in asking that no further restrictions be placed on the traditional Latin Mass,” the letter emphasized, adding that as Catholics and non-Catholics, as artists, scientists, poets, inventors, and others, the signatories “share a love for the beauty, the reverence, and the mystery embodied in the ancient liturgy of the Latin Mass.”
The Catholics who signed the letter highlighted that they “pledge [their] filial loyalty” to Pope Francis, and “come to you (Pope Francis) with the humility and obedience but also the confidence of children, telling a loving father of our spiritual needs.”
“We pray that you will not lump us with some of the angry and disrespectful voices magnified by social media,” they continued, adding that most of them typically attend the Novus Ordo, the new rite Mass celebrated in English.
According to the letter’s signatory list, the letter is signed by actor and producer Eduardo Verastegui; international religious freedom advocate Nina Shea; founder of Dorothy Day Workers Farm Larry Chapp; former assistant professor at Stanford University Medical School Dr. Scott French, and several others.
“Petitioners of this caliber are proof the traditional Latin Mass cannot be understood as a mere refuge from modernity, for some of the most creative minds on our planet are inspired by the Latin Mass—its beauty, its reverence, its mystery—to make new works of art and also to serve the least among us,” the letter concluded:
We, the undersigned, ask that no further restrictions be placed on the traditional Latin Mass so that it may be preserved for the good of the Catholic Church and of the world.
