A champion of the immemorial Mass

Alberto Carosa remembers His Eminence Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos (1929-2018)

May 18, 2018, is bound to go down in the history of the Catholic Church as a sad day for the traditional-minded faithful, since it marks the passing away of a prelate who has done so much to promote the cause of traditional liturgy based on the 1962 Roman Missal: the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy (1996–2006) and President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (2000–2009), His Eminence Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos.

Cardinal Hoyos: tireless apostolic zeal

It is impossible to give a detailed account of the religious trajectory of the late Cardinal in a short article so we will limit ourselves to the essentials, with a particular emphasis of the liturgy related highlights in his long life.

Born in Medellín, Colombia, on July 4, 1929, he entered seminary at an early age and after studies in Europe, a doctorate in Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and another in Sociology from the University of Leuven in Belgium. On October 26, 1952, he was ordained priest in the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Rome. He then returned to Colombia where he served as priest vicar and parish priest.

After having been appointed as Coadjutor Bishop of Pereira with right of succession, in 1983, he took up the role of General Secretary of CELAM (Latin American Episcopal Conference). In 1987 he assumed the presidency of that body, a position he held until 1991. He then served as Archbishop of Bucaramanga, where he served as ordinary until 1996, when John Paul II appointed him Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome. He was created Cardinal by the same Pope in 1998. In 2000, he was appointed President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. After his resignation in 2009, when he turned 80, the Cardinal continued to work as a consultant for different departments of the Holy See, but most of all continued to exercise his pastoral ministry, with a particular emphasis on the promotion and celebration of the old rite, which in his opinion should have been more aptly termed “Gregorian rite”.

As far as is known, the Cardinal did not stand out as a particular upholder of the pre-Vatican II liturgy prior to his appointment as President of Ecclesia Dei, but when Benedict XVI tasked him with this office, his pastoral activity took a completely new turn, which catapulted him on to the front line of the defence and promotion of the traditional liturgy. In other words, he did not limit himself to only preach, but also practised what he was mandated to preach, as evidently shown by a watershed event that took place on May 24, 2003, in the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, and that sent shock waves throughout the Catholic world and beyond: a Solemn Pontifical in the Gregorian Rite celebrated by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos upon request of a group of traditional-minded faithful. The purpose, as stated in a communiqué issued by the Ecclesia Dei Commission and aired by Radio Vatican in its May 25 newscast, was to offer an act of thanks and filial devotion to John Paul II for having promulgated the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei leading to the indulted Mass, at the same time joining in prayer in the 25th year of his pontificate, in the most ancient Marian basilica in Rome.

As one could have easily imagined, the impact of this celebration of the Mass went far and wide. It was as if a spell had been broken and a myth dispelled, the myth that this Rite, in force till 1969, had been abolished by Paul VI. On the contrary the Rite continued to co-exist with the Novus Ordo, albeit marginalised and left to fall into oblivion. As a matter of fact, despite the Pope’s appeal with his Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei, too many bishops still were persisting in prohibiting the old rite in their dioceses. But now, for the first time since Vatican II, a senior Cardinal of the Roman Curia, still in office, or better in double office (Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy and President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei) and even reputed among the “papabili” (candidates to the Papacy), set a precedent which the bishops in the world would find increasingly difficult to ignore. He celebrated a most solemn traditional Latin liturgy in one of the four major Papal basilicas in Rome amid Gregorian plainchants and thick whiffs of incense, thus stirring such deep emotions that moved some of the thousand faithful from around the world even to tears.

The Pope’s message through the then Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, conveyed the Pope’s thanks and blessing to those present and more in general to all those faithful still attached to the old liturgy.

Moreover, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos pointed out in his homily that "the old Roman Rite preserves its right of citizenship in the Church and cannot be considered extinguished". Therefore, this Rite is entitled to its rightful place in “the multiplicity of Catholic Rites, both Latin and Eastern,” he went on. “What unites the variety of Rites is the same faith in the Eucharistic mystery, whose profession has always secured unity in the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

Whatever the initial intention, the most immediate consequence of the Mass celebrated in St Mary Major with such “pomp and circumstance” was that a completely new approach was ushered in: from being just tolerated, from then on traditional liturgy was to have been encouraged and promoted. An opportunity which was quickly seized by the traditionalists of the Latin Mass Society magazine: “It is time, therefore”, its May issue editorial proclaimed, “for the LMS to cease to think and act like a society under siege and to become more of a campaigning and proselytising body - arguing the case for Tradition and the immemorial Mass in the media, lobbying for the introduction of the traditional priestly orders into England and Wales, pressing for old rite parishes, and insisting that all the sacraments – not ‘just’ the Mass – be made widely and generously available.”

Interestingly, at the time of the above pontifical, Cardinal Francis Arinze was quoted in the magazine Inside the Vatican as mooting that Rome was considering a document mandating the celebration of the old Latin Mass in parishes around the world wherever groups of parishioners had petitioned their bishop to allow it. This was one of the first references to the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, some years prior to its promulgation in 2007. Nobody can deny that Cardinal Hoyos should be duly and amply credited for it, although in his humility he would never have agreed with such recognition. On the contrary, he is on record as having described the late Cardinal Alfons Cardinal Stickler and FIUV President Michael Davies as “real precursors” of Summorum Pontificum.

A year after its enforcement, another major highlight in the Cardinal’s apostolate in favour of the preVatican II liturgy was the 14 June 2008 celebration of the first Pontifical High Mass in the Tridentine Rite in 39 years in London's Westminster Cathedral, with a congregation of more than 1,500 people in attendance, including many young families. In the press conference preceding the event, Cardinal Hoyos was all the more outspoken, when he made it clear that the “Holy Father wanted to give back to the world such great treasure, the enormous spiritual richness of the ancient liturgy, a powerful tool of sanctification.” A treasure which is a gift of God and therefore should be made available not only to traditional minded church-goers or the groups who were asking for it, he went on, but to all the faithful. In fact, he said Pope Benedict would like to see not only “many ordinary parishes” celebrating the Gregorian Rite, but “all the parishes”, and therefore all seminarians to be taught how to celebrate it.

The Cardinal continued his pastoral activity to promote the Gregorian Rite after his resignation in 2009, as shown by the fact that in 2013 and 2016 he celebrated in St Peter’s Pontifical Masses for the annual Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage to Rome.

If on the one hand he was firmly convinced that the period “that we are living since the enforcement of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of the Holy Father Benedict XVI” is a “time of grace”, on the other hand he acknowledged the high price which was being paid for the old liturgy to be gradually and successfully reinstated. “It was a real nightmare putting Summorum Pontificum into practice”, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos painfully recalled during a book presentation on the opposition to Summorum Pontificum, which was held by the late president of Centro Culturale Lepanto, Fabio Bernabei, in Centro Russia Ecumenica in Borgo Pio adjacent to the Vatican. To have an idea of what the senior prelate had to endure and how daunting his task was, suffice to say that, as was widely reported in the media, none of the English or Welsh Bishops attended the Pontifical in Westminster Cathedral. In a way this “deafening absence” did not come as a complete surprise, since La Stampa, on 18 November 2007, already reported that the English and Welsh Bishops, together with most of the Italian Bishops, were waging a “real silent battle against the motu proprio of Benedict XVI”. But today, after more than a decade, thanks be to God, we are now in a completely different situation, and also thanks be to the late Cardinal Hoyos, for his tireless apostolic zeal in the service of the Pope and Holy Mother Church.