Northern Ireland

Latin Mass to continue in Down & Connor, priest insists

The Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Belfast's Antrim Road. Picture by Hugh Russell
The Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Belfast's Antrim Road. Picture by Hugh Russell The Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Belfast's Antrim Road. Picture by Hugh Russell

A HIGH-PROFILE priest has assured Catholics in the Down and Connor diocese that they can still celebrate the old Latin Mass.

Fr Patrick McCafferty said that while Pope Francis had imposed limits on the Tridentine Mass, services will still take place in Latin.

Pope Francis last week reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that his predecessor Benedict XVI relaxed in 2007.

The pontiff said he was taking action because Benedict's reform had become a source of division and had been used by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernised the Church and its liturgy.

The move has been criticised by Catholic conservatives.

The Latin Mass has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years, with one church in north Belfast holding daily traditional services.

In 2019, the Catholic order the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest bought the former Fortwilliam and Macrory Presbyterian Church on the Antrim Road, which had closed the previous year after serving as a place of worship for 133 years. It is now known as the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Fr McCafferty told The Irish News that services at the north Belfast church would continue.

The west Belfast-based priest said it was important to obey the Pope and noted "the Mass is the Mass, whatever language it is said in".

He said the Latin Mass had not been banned but "regulated to prevent disunity".

"All Francis is trying to do is prevent division within the Church," he said.

"The last thing we want in the Church is disunity."

Fr McCafferty stressed that "there are not two Masses – they are the same".

"The crucial thing is that we celebrate what the Mass is – the Liturgy of the Eucharist," he said.

"It doesn't matter whether it's said in Greek, English or Latin it is still the same Mass."

Pope Francis said he was "saddened" that the use of the old Mass "is often characterised by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the 'true Church"'.

Traditionalists and Catholics attached to the old liturgy accused Francis of heresy for opening the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Rorate Caeli, a popular traditionalist blog run in the US, said Francis's "attack" was the strongest rebuke of a Pope against his predecessors in living memory.

Down and Connor was contacted for a response.