Cardinal Burke to celebrate Traditional Latin Mass at St Peter’s

Cardinal Raymond Burke will celebrate a Pontifical High Mass in the Traditional Latin Rite at the Altar of the Chair in St Peter’s Basilica during the annual Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage in Rome this October.

The announcement was made by Christian Marquant, president of the Coetus Internationalis Summorum Pontificum, organisers of the pilgrimage, who confirmed that the liturgy will take place on Saturday 25 October. The 14th edition of the event will be held in Rome and Vatican City from 24 to 26 October, coinciding with the Jubilee Year.

The pilgrimage, established in 2012, annually gathers clergy, seminarians and lay faithful attached to the Traditional Latin Mass. This year’s programme will also include Pontifical Vespers celebrated by Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, as previously announced by the organisers.

The celebration in St Peter’s marks the first Traditional Mass offered in the basilica as part of the pilgrimage since 2022. In recent years, the programme was limited to the Divine Office and Eucharistic adoration after permissions to celebrate Mass at papal altars were not granted.

Cardinal Burke, Patron Emeritus of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, has been a prominent supporter of the Traditional liturgy throughout his episcopal ministry. Born in Wisconsin in 1948, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of La Crosse in 1975, later serving as Bishop of La Crosse and then Archbishop of St Louis. In 2008, he was appointed Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest court, before being created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI.

He has taken part in many of the Summorum pilgrimages and has been a frequent celebrant of the Traditional Latin Mass in Rome and abroad. His role in this year’s pilgrimage is being welcomed by organisers as a return to the established pattern of previous years.

The development follows Cardinal Burke’s recent private audience with Pope Leo XIV, previously reported in the Catholic Herald, in which the Pope received the American cardinal at the Apostolic Palace. That meeting was noted as significant in light of Burke’s long-standing advocacy for the older form of the Roman Rite.

Speaking exclusively to the Catholic Herald, Dr Joseph Shaw, President of Una Voce and Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, said: “I would like to express my deep gratitude to Pope Leo for this truly pastoral gesture. Catholics from all over the world come on pilgrimage to St Peter’s, where St Peter is buried; Pope Leo is extending to Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass the same welcome which I am sure he would like to give to everyone.

“After the confusion and, it must be said, suffering of recent years, we can look forward to the restoration of peaceful co-existence between the new and the older forms of Holy Mass.”

The Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage, named after Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio widening access to the Traditional Latin Mass, brings together participants from across the world for liturgies, processions and devotions in the Eternal City. Pilgrims typically gather for Vespers, a solemn procession through the streets of Rome, and the concluding Mass at St Peter’s Basilica.

Organisers say further details of the programme will be released in the coming weeks.

Photo credit: Institute of Christ the King