Gregorius Magnus - Summer 2023 - Edition no. 15

Cardinal Zuppi and the Summorum

by Alberto Carosa

As is now customary, every year since 2012 the Summorum Pontificum people have gathered in Rome from all over the world at the end of October for a pilgrimage designed to show their love for the Traditional liturgy and, in a procession ad sedem Petri in the city centre, their fidelity to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The event unfolds in a series of religious rites based on liturgical books prior to Vatican II, and most recently took place from Friday to Sunday, 28th to 30th October 2022. The last day always coincides with the last Sunday in October, the feast of Christ the King according to the pre-conciliar calendar.

For some years now, the official opening of the pilgrimage has been preceded in the first part of Friday by a meeting in which issues and problems relating to the international predicament of the Traditional liturgy are discussed. Whereas this is an event of a secular character, for the rest of Friday and in the following two days a multiplicity of religious ceremonies take place, including Friday evening Vespers, which officially opens the pilgrimage. The other two religious highlights are the Solemn Pontifical Mass in San Pietro on Saturday morning at the end of the procession, presided over in 2022 by Msgr Dominique Rey, bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, and then the Pontifical Mass for the feast of Christ the King on Sunday at the church of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini (Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims).

The meeting was held in the great hall of the Augustinianum Patristic Institute adjacent to St. Peter’s Square on the initiative of Christian Marquant, president of Oremus-Paix Liturgique and with the coordination of Prof Rubén Peretó Rivas, president of CIEL (International Centre for Liturgical Studies). Among the speakers were Fr Claude Barthe, official chaplain of the Coetus Internationalis Summorum Pontificum, organizer of the pilgrimage; Don Nicola Bux, theologian and former Vatican consultant; liturgy scholar and writer Peter Kwasniewski; Vaticanist Aldo Maria Valli; and Trinidad Dufourq, a French translator at the University of Buenos Aires specializing in religious texts. The gist of the event and its lectures was aptly captured by Don Nicola Bux when he proclaimed with convincing optimism that ‘the future is ours’.

Those wishing to know more about the interventions may consult the various dedicated sites and blogs that have dealt with the topic. Here, however, we intend to explore a particular aspect of the event, which until the last moment this writer feared could be cancelled. Given the ongoing offensive against the Traditional liturgy in the ancient rite, especially after the publication of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of Tradition), this writer seriously feared that the pilgrimage could be cancelled at the last moment, and therefore we were pleasantly surprised that everything went smoothly in the end.