Pope recalls 50th anniversary of 1st papal Mass in Italian

March 09, 2015

Pope Francis traveled to the Chiesa di Ognissanti on the evening of March 7, where Blessed Paul VI had first celebrated parts of the Mass in the Italian language exactly five decades earlier.

In December 1963, the Second Vatican Council issued the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. In September 1964, the Sacred Congregation of Rites and the Consilium for the Implementation of the Liturgy Constitution issued Inter Oecumenici, the first Instruction for the Right Application of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. Inter Oecumenici went into effect on March 7, 1965.

Reflecting on the evening’s Gospel reading during his homily at Mass, Pope Francis said that Christ’s cleansing of the temple is a call to “authentic worship, to the correspondence between liturgy and life.”

The sacred liturgy, he continued, is not a time to think about other things or to pray the Rosary; “it is not primarily a doctrine to understand or a rite to be performed.” Instead, it is a “source of life and light for our journey of faith.”

During Lent, the liturgy calls the faithful to a “time of interior renewal, of the remission of sins, the time in which we are called to rediscover the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, which makes us go from the darkness of sin to the light of grace and friendship with Jesus.”

“Right here, fifty years ago, Blessed Paul VI inaugurated, in a sense, the reform of the liturgy,” the Pope continued. He prayed that the parish would be a place where the faithful gather for personal and communal prayer, welcome one another as brothers and not as strangers, listen to the Word of God in the liturgical assembly, and thus find support for living a Christian life.

 

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Further information:

• Santa Messa nella Parrocchia romana di Ognissanti nel 50° anniversario della prima Messa in italiano celebrata dal Beato Paolo VI (Holy See Press Office)
• Visit to the Roman Parish of "Ognissanti" (Vatican YouTube)
• Pope Francis: Church calls us to authentic liturgical life (Vatican Radio)
• Chiesa di Ognissanti (Wikipedia)
• Sacrosanctum Concilium
• Inter Oecumenici