Rumours have been circulating that Pope Francis is planning some kind of restriction on the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (EF), the “Traditional Mass”. This form of the liturgy clearly still has opponents in the Church. Its supporters regard it as, potentially, being a key driver of the Church’s revival, because of the counter-cultural zeal of many of its younger adherents.
Such is the concern in some quarters of the Church about the direction of traffic in regards to the threat to the Extraordinary Form, that the Una Voce Federation took out an advert – a call to arms – in the mass-circulation Italian daily newspaper la Repubblica, appearing on Sunday 4 July. The federation was founded in 1965 as a united international body to promote organisations like the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, Una Voce America and the Pro Missa Tridentina in Germany which promote the EF.
