What was Summorum Pontificum?

Summorum Pontificum is the apostolic letter motu proprio issued by Pope Benedict XVI on July 7, 2007, broadly liberalizing the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. It is one of the most consequential liturgical documents of the post-conciliar period.

Its central declaration: the Roman Missal promulgated by St. Pius V (the TLM) and the one promulgated by Paul VI (the Novus Ordo) are two “uses” of the one Roman Rite — the Extraordinary Form and the Ordinary Form. The older Missal had “never been juridically abrogated, and consequently, in principle, was always permitted.” Any priest of the Latin Rite could celebrate it privately without permission. Where stable groups of the faithful requested it, parish priests were to provide for it.

The document was a landmark. For nearly forty years after 1969, many bishops had treated the TLM as effectively forbidden, and Catholics who loved the older Mass were often marginalized or treated as suspect. Summorum Pontificum normalized the TLM as a legitimate part of the Church’s patrimony. Vocations to traditional communities surged. New apostolates opened. Diocesan parishes began to add Latin Masses to their schedules.

That framework lasted until July 2021, when Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes effectively reversed it. But the fourteen years of Summorum Pontificum produced a generation of Catholics formed in the older liturgy. That generation cannot be unformed by an administrative act. The traditional movement today is, in large part, the harvest of those fourteen years.

Go deeper → From Summorum Pontificum to Traditionis Custodes