The mind of the Pope – reflections on the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage

Gavin Ashenden • October 27, 2025

This weekend an important annual pilgrimage took place in Rome. The city attracts many pilgrimages, but this one touched the nerve of an internal conflict that began during the last pontificate — a campaign to restrict the ancient liturgy of the Mass which found an advocate in the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.

It was the annual pilgrimage of those attached to the traditional Roman liturgy (the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite) — the Mass in Latin according to the 1962 Missal (the pre–Vatican II format). The pilgrimage is known as Populus Summorum Pontificum Ad Petri Sedem (The People of the Supreme Pontiff to the See of Peter), referencing Summorum Pontificum (2007), Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter making clear that the traditional Mass should always be available to both priests and the faithful.

This, of course, is not only about liturgy. It is not even a struggle over the Second Vatican Council, though it has been presented that way often enough. The Council never envisaged the suppression of the very Mass it itself used. The conflict is subtler — and more sinister. It concerns the way the Council has been appropriated by an anti-Catholic spirit of the age, one committed to disdain for absolute, traditional morality and to the celebration of secular values, seeking to create a new and different Catholic culture.

If viewed sociologically, the issue stems from a generation of leaders — in governments, institutions, and even the Vatican — formed by that worldview. From a metaphysical perspective, some argue it represents a battle against authentic Catholicism, with efforts to undermine the Church from within. Authors such as Taylor Marshall, in Infiltration, have articulated this view. Jesuit Fr Robert McTeigue has argued on iCatholic Radio that the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass appears to be a straightforward power play, lacking any theological justification.

Michael Matt, on the streets of Rome, has been asking his viewers and supporters to consider the very permission for the pilgrimage as a sign — one that might credit Pope Leo himself with the fact that it is taking place at all.

Catholic Herald readers will be all too aware of the squabble within Catholic circles over whether traditional Catholics (a tautology if ever there was one) can trust the Pope. In these early days of his pontificate, the jury is still out. But a number of us — Michael Matt included — see hopeful signs within a deeply complex situation. Pope Leo’s early speeches have emphasised unity — not as uniformity, but as harmony within diversity — and his slow, careful approach may reflect pastoral prudence rather than inaction.

Matt notes the controversy this particular pilgrimage will generate within the Vatican itself. It is no exaggeration to say that progressive elements, long and firmly entrenched within the Vatican, remain deeply committed to eradicating the Latin Mass and all it represents. They see it as a rallying flag for those who harbour reservations about the Second Vatican Council — as emblematic of a regressive, backward-looking, “primitive” outlook. Traditionis Custodes appeared to give them complete and unassailable victory in their aggressive and ruthless campaign.

Yet suddenly, here it is — and not merely taking place, but with the Latin Mass being celebrated by Cardinal Burke. It is worth recalling the campaign launched against him. In 2014 he was removed as Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and reassigned to the largely symbolic position of Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, from which he was sidelined in 2017 when Archbishop Giovanni Becciu was appointed special delegate. In 2023 it was reported that he would also lose his right to a subsidised Vatican apartment and salary.

So this weekend's pilgrimage could hardly be more symbolically suggestive of a significant reversal of the values that repudiated both Cardinal Burke and the traditional Latin Mass. In such circumstances, only a personal intervention by Pope Leo himself could have brought this about.

Without being too dramatic, this intervention constitutes a serious reversal of internal Vatican policy — both toward Cardinal Burke himself and, institutionally, toward the TLM. The implications have an energy and a cogency that go far beyond the event itself and St Peter’s Basilica.

After this pilgrimage, a priest in any diocese around the world would be in a position to say to a bishop exercising a particularly heavy hand against the Latin Mass community: “May I ask why our access to the Mass of the Ages is being so marginalised in our diocese when the Pope in Rome welcomes it into his own basilica?”

We should not imagine that this would constitute a knock-down argument in the febrile culture wars in which the Church is immersed. But nor can we say any longer that Pope Leo is committed to continuing the policies that have plagued the Vatican in recent years.

I suspect his style will continue to be quiet, understated but determined — signalling that he is his own man, his own pope. In public, he will continue to use the language of deference towards his predecessor that decorum requires. He may also remain overcommitted (from a conservative perspective) to a theology of left-leaning social justice learned during his years in South America.

Pope Leo told the world in his interview with Crux that he believed the complexities of Traditionis Custodes could be resolved through a process of synodally modelled conversations. Now there will be plenty of such conversations taking place — both in Rome and in dioceses across the world — following the completion of this pilgrimage and the stir it has caused in the press.

As chief pastor of the Church, if he is pursuing a policy of unity, this is a policy that could bring back from the excluded margins those who worship with the Mass of the Ages. We can only be grateful if the strategy he pursues is one that defends those nurtured by the Mass of the Ages and, through a series of deliberate, gradual steps, signals that giving it space and status now finds favour at the heart of this papacy.