> According to Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Apostolic Ceremonies, the late Pope Francis had requested that the funeral rites be simplified and focused on expressing the faith of the Church in the Risen Body of Christ.
Always struck me as a simple man and that likely contributed to people liking him more when compared to his predecessors. RIP.
It fictionalizes and sensationalizes some details; and that’s ok because its purpose is to make you feel exactly the way you feel about it.
Pope Francis was a wonderful steward of Christianity and espoused the virtues that anyone would want to see in their religious leaders: humility, grace, an openness to listen and a strong voice against even prelates in his own church that are xenophobic or nationalistic. He wanted us to welcome all and to live as the bible said Jesus did.
The fear I have is that each swing of the pendulum goes in two directions. He was far more “liberal” than the conservative Catholic prelates of the USCCB, and I fear his actions — including rightfully limiting the Latin mass, will force the church to swing in the other direction and give in to the illiberal forces that divide us.
Why is that a political thing though? The mass of the roman church was for centuries (almost all it’s history?) in latin.
If you’re Catholic, suggesting that a mass spoken in one language over another is somehow "less" takes away from the most important idea of the Mass: reenacting Christ’s Last supper commandment and the institution of the Holy Eucharist for what amounts to word games.
This divisive description of the mass increased over the decades, to the point that it threatened to cause a schism. As such it was the Holy Father’s duty to resolve the issue.
It didn't actually.
See Sacrosanctum Concilium: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_coun...
Vatican II opened the way for use of vernacular in the Mass while also directing "use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites".
In practice, after the overhaul of the Latin rites was completed and promulgated (published) in 1969, four years after the council ended in '65, the Latin language itself was dropped almost everywhere all at once and only translations were used. Many people rejoiced at that, some did not, but the vast majority of bishops, priests and laity alike, conservatives and liberals across the full spectrum, probably 99.999%, went ahead full throttle with Mass and all the sacraments in the vernacular.
There were hold-out contingents like the SSPX, led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who stuck with the all Latin rites per the last round of small reforms in 1962, the same as used for the celebration of Mass, etc. during the whole time of the council from 1962-65.
It was over the next 40 years that discontent with the reforms of 1969, and their fallout, began to grow. There was increasing awareness that it wasn't just a switch from Latin to vernacular — the '69 reforms were "cut from whole cloth", outright replacing the traditional rites with syntheses of a commission of scholars. Long story short, many Catholics, some born before '69 and many born after (myself included), desire a return, and have implemented a return, to the traditional form of the Latin rites. Pope Benedict XVI gave it his blessing. But then Pope Francis was not a fan, believing it to be a retrograde movement that causes more harm than good and a kind of "saying no" to the Holy Spirit. It's hard to find middle ground on this matter, to be quite honest.