I blinked in surprise when I saw the photographs. On June 18, the Archbishop of Liverpool – a diocese associated with the drab vestments and liturgy of the 1970s – processed into St Mary’s Shrine Church, Warrington, wearing a cape of violet silk whose train was so long that it stretched into the next postcode.
Archbishop Malcolm McMahon was sporting the cappa magna (“great cape”), a flamboyant pre-Vatican II vestment that hadn’t been seen in his neck of the woods for decades. But then this was a prelude to a pre-conciliar ceremony: he was ordaining two priests of the traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) using the Old Missal, something that hadn’t happened anywhere in England and Wales for over 40 years. He also celebrated a Tridentine Mass watched by the Bishop of Shrewsbury, Mark Davies, sitting in the choir.
