ROME (LifeSiteNews) — An article published in Italian newspaper Il Giornale is sparking debate in the country over the role that the Traditional Latin Mass plays in strengthening the bond between Rome and Catholics with a devotion to the older liturgical rites.
On June 28, Italian journalist and Il Giornale Editor-in-Chief Tommaso Cerno published an article arguing that wider celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass for Catholics who “want to remain faithful to the Pope” could become a practical step toward easing tensions with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).
According to sources in Rome, the front-page editorial circulated widely in the Vatican area and in Borgo Pio, a neighborhood adjacent to the Vatican City, and prompted a wide debate in the mainstream media about the role of the Latin Mass in the Catholic Church after Pope Francis’ restrictions and on the eve of the SSPX’s episcopal consecrations without papal mandate.
“What if we were witnessing a reversal in the history of the liturgy? The collapse of a long‑standing misunderstanding: the idea that Latin belongs to a museum, while Italian (or other national languages) is the privileged path toward the future.… Today the Church stumbles into a paradox: the very return of the Latin Mass and the possibility of mending the rift with the SSPX world may become not a step backward, but an exercise in realism.”
Cerno maintained that the liturgical question should not be viewed as the central cause of the decades-long division with the SSPX and suggested that a more accommodating approach could encourage greater ecclesial unity.
According to Cerno, the dispute associated with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre has always extended beyond liturgical forms. He wrote that the 1988 episcopal consecrations – carried out without papal approval and resulting in excommunications at the time – were evidence that the rupture was mainly “a short circuit of authority and identity,” a signal that says: “Here something broke.”
Decades after the Second Vatican Council and the liturgical reform, things have turned out differently from what was once expected. Cerno, writing as a secular journalist outside the Catholic Church, asks: “What if Latin became pop? A language that belongs to no one and therefore, paradoxically, can belong to everyone.”
According to him, the Traditional liturgy attracts young people precisely because they “seek to experience something that hasn’t already been digested – an encounter less like a condominium assembly and more like a true rite: few speak, many listen; meaning flows through the body, rhythm, and silence. Latin as vertigo: not because you translate every phrase, but because you recognize another, untamed language.”
The article, written by one of the most famous Italian journalists, prompted a wide debate across the nation and the world.
Vittorio Feltri, another well-known conservative Italian journalist, praised Cerno’s proposal to loosen the tight restrictions on the Traditional liturgy, noting that “even the Vatican, for some time now, has been broadcasting a radio news program entirely in Latin, Hebdomada Papae.” It is therefore strange to appear so severe toward the liturgy.
Catholic writer Damian Thompson of The Spectator highlighted Cerno’s call for a “signal” to Catholics who want the Latin Mass while remaining loyal to the Pope, arguing that “removing the limitations for the ‘loyal’ would not be a reward for nostalgia, but an investment in communion.”