Cardinal Mauro Gambetti. Photo: CNS Reaffirming the principles that led the Vatican to severely limit private celebrations of Mass in St Peter’s Basilica in the early morning, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, the new archpriest of the basilica, said exceptions would be made for “groups with particular and legitimate needs”.
In addition, requests by priests to celebrate alone, without a congregation, “may also be discerned from time to time, without prejudice to the principle that everything should take place in an atmosphere of recollection and decorum and with vigilance, so that what is exceptional does not become ordinary, distorting the intentions and the sense of the magisterium”, the cardinal wrote in a note released by the Vatican press office June 22.
Letter
A letter dated March 12 and initialled by Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, substitute secretary for general affairs in the Vatican Secretariat of State, had said that beginning March 22, “individual celebrations (of the Mass) are suppressed”, and priests wanting to celebrate in the basilica in the early morning would be invited to join a concelebrated liturgy.
Archbishop Peña’s letter also severely limited celebrations of the Mass according to the “extraordinary form”, sometimes referred to as the Tridentine rite, by saying priests who wanted to use the rite could do so only in the Clementine Chapel in the grotto under the basilica at 7, 7:30, 8 and 9am. Because concelebration is not foreseen by the rite, that meant that only four priests could celebrate the old Mass each day in the basilica.
Cardinal Gambetti’s note, however, said that “everything possible must be done to fulfil the wishes of the Faithful and priests as foreseen by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum”, Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 document allowing wider celebration of the old rite.
The restrictions instituted by the Secretariat of State were in line with the Code of Canon Law, which says priests “are completely free to celebrate the Eucharist individually, however, but not while a concelebration is taking place in the same church or oratory”. Multiple individual Masses were being celebrated simultaneously at different altars throughout the basilica.