This weekend an important annual pilgrimage took place in Rome. The city attracts many pilgrimages, but this one touched the nerve of an internal conflict that began during the last pontificate — a campaign to restrict the ancient liturgy of the Mass which found an advocate in the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.
It was the annual pilgrimage of those attached to the traditional Roman liturgy (the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite) — the Mass in Latin according to the 1962 Missal (the pre–Vatican II format). The pilgrimage is known as Populus Summorum Pontificum Ad Petri Sedem (The People of the Supreme Pontiff to the See of Peter), referencing Summorum Pontificum (2007), Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter making clear that the traditional Mass should always be available to both priests and the faithful.
