Benedict, true lover of the beauty of the traditional rite of Mass

With the passing of Pope Benedict XVI, many Catholics have felt that they have lost a clear and sure point of reference for their faith. One may have the feeling of orphans. We can say that Pope Benedict XVI was a pope who placed at the center of his personal life and of the life of the Church the supernatural vision of the faith and of the perennial validity of the sacred Tradition of the Church, which constitutes the source and pillar of our faith together with the Holy Scriptures. In this sense, the greatest and most beneficial act of his pontificate was the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum with the full restoration of the traditional Latin liturgy in all its expressions: Holy Mass, the sacraments and all other sacred rites.

This pontifical act will go down in history as epochal. Pope Benedict XVI states that the traditional rite of Holy Mass has never been abrogated and should always remain in the Church, because what was holy for our ancestors and for the saints must also be holy for us and for future generations. At a time, as was the case after the Second Vatican Council, in which there was an almost general movement within the Church of radical rejection of the millenary liturgical rite of the Holy Mass and therefore of a break with the very principle of Tradition, the pontificate of Benedict XVI was worth it for the sole reason of having issued the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificumwith which the healing of the wound in the Body of the Church began, a wound caused by the attitude of rejection and hatred of the venerable and millenary rule of prayer of the Church.

In his spiritual testament Pope Benedict XVI has left us among other things the following short substantive sentence, which I consider the most important of all: remain firm in the faith! Don’t get confused! Today we are witnessing in the life of the Church a process of dilution of the Catholic faith and of adaptation to the spirit of heretics, unbelievers and apostates with the specious and euphoric name of synodality and abusing the canonical institution of a synod. Such a situation is demoralizing for all true Catholics. Hence the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI which is expressed in the words “Stand firm in the faith! Don’t get confused!” and in his epochal Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum it remains a light, an encouragement and a consolation. This pope was strong in faith, a true lover of the incorruptible beauty and firmness of the traditional rite of Holy Mass, he gave primacy to prayer, supernatural vision and eternity. This inheritance will overcome thanks to the intervention of Divine Providence, which never abandons its Church, the current enormous doctrinal confusion, the creeping apostasy especially among a worldly and incredulous caste of theologians, who are the new scribes, and between an apostasy creeping of not a few members of the high clergy, who are the new Sadducees.

Pope Benedict XVI has made his episcopal motto “Cooperatores veritatis” shine that is, collaborators of the truth. With this motto he wants to say to every faithful Catholic, to every priest, to every bishop, to every cardinal and also to Pope Francis: what really matters is the unshakeable fidelity to Catholic truth, to the constant and venerable liturgical tradition of the Church and the primacy of God and eternity. May God accept the prayers and spiritual sufferings which Pope Benedict XVI offered in his retired life, and grant fully Catholic and fully apostolic Bishops and Popes for the future of the Church. Because, as Saint Paul said: “We can do nothing against the truth, but only for the sake of the truth” (2 Cor 13:8).

* Auxiliary Bishop of Astana