Rorate Caeli

Castrillón: is the lifting of the excommunications near?

Article by the Swiss religious news agency Apic (published in the website of Swiss Protestant monthly Bonne Nouvelle):

Rome: is the lifting of the Lefebvrist excommunications near?
Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, president of the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei" in charge of traditionalists has declared that the lifting of the excommunication weighing on the bishops of the Priestly Fraternity of St. X since 1988 "can happen" but that it definitely “depends on them."

Thus he implicitly recognized that this gesture from Rome would come after a formal acceptance of the consequences of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) by the Lefebvrists.

As for the celebration of a Mass by the pope according to the extraordinary form of the Roman rite (Tridentine Mass), it was felt that this would certainly take place but that "the time was not ripe."

For his part, the Colombian cardinal presided - for the first time in Rome since the publication last July of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum – at a Mass in the pre-concilliar rite on the evening of November 22. The Mass which opened a festival of Baroque music was celebrated in a church in the center of Rome.

(Translation by Mornac)