An Open Letter to Pope Francis

Please join me in signing this plea to Pope Francis to not further restrict the Traditional Latin Mass. Sign the letter here.

From Letter to Pope Francis

We, the undersigned, are inspired by the recent petition to Pope Francis that was organized by the classical music composer Sir James MacMillan and signed by distinguished British artists, business leaders, composers, human rights activists, musicians, and writers. We join our voices with theirs in asking that no further restrictions be placed on the traditional Latin Mass.

We are Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and nonbelievers. We are scientists, novelists, comedians, inventors, poets, painters, business leaders, composers, singers, musicians, playwrights, filmmakers, advocates for the poor, sculptors, conductors, philanthropists, human rights activists, and patrons of the arts. We share a love for the beauty, the reverence, and the mystery embodied in the ancient liturgy of the Latin Mass.

Those of us who are Catholics pledge our filial loyalty to you, Pope Francis. We come to you with the humility and obedience but also the confidence of children, telling a loving father of our spiritual needs. We pray that you will not lump us with some of the angry and disrespectful voices magnified by social media. Most of us attend the Novus Ordo regularly, and all of us acknowledge the most important thing about the dominant rite of the Latin church: each time the “new” Mass is celebrated, Jesus Christ comes to us in the Eucharist, really and fully present and uniting us to his Body, Blood, and Divinity.

To deprive the next generation of artists of this source of mystery, beauty, and contemplation of the sacred seems shortsighted. All of us, believers and nonbelievers alike, recognize that this ancient liturgy, which inspired the work of Palestrina, Bach, and Beethoven and generations of great artists, is a magnificent achievement of civilization and part of the common cultural heritage of humanity. It is medicine for the soul, one antidote to the gross materialism of the postmodern age.

So we join our voices not only to this generation of great artists but to previous generations as well, who have asked the Pope to permit access to the Latin Mass.

The 1971 petition to Pope Paul VI was signed by poets Robert Lowell, Robert Graves, David Jones, and England’s poet-laureate Cecil Day-Lewis; major novelists such as Graham Greene, Nancy Mitford, Djuna Barnes, and Julian Green; as well as the most celebrated Argentinian short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose literary work gave birth to the “magic realism” movement of the late 20th century among Spanish writers in the Americas. The 1966 petition organized by Christine Campo, translator of Marcel Proust’s Death Comes for the Cathedrals, was signed by W.H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, Jacques Maritain, French Nobel Prize-winning novelist Francois Mauriac, composer Benjamin Britten, and Gertrud von Le Fort, author of the Catholic classic Dialogue of the Carmelites, which later formed the basis of an opera by Francis Poulenc.

Petitioners of this caliber are proof the traditional Latin Mass cannot be understood as a mere refuge from modernity, for some of the most creative minds on our planet are inspired by the Latin Mass—its beauty, its reverence, its mystery—to make new works of art and also to serve the least among us.

We, the undersigned, ask that no further restrictions be placed on the traditional Latin Mass so that it may be preserved for the good of the Catholic Church and of the world.

• Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, former California Poet Laureate
• Eduardo Verastegui, actor, singer, producer
• Morten Lauridsen, composer
• Andrew Sullivan, author and editor
• R. R. Reno, editor, First Things
• Nina Shea, international religious freedom advocate
• Angela Alioto, International Director of the Knights of Saint Francis, civil rights trial attorney, former president San Francisco Board of Supervisors
• Frank La Rocca, composer, Mass of the Americas
• Blanton Alspaugh, Grammy-Award-winning classical music record producer
• David Conte, Chair and Professor of Composition, San Francisco Conservatory of Music
• Larry Chapp, theologian, founder of Dorothy Day Workers Farm
• Dr. Scott French, Former Assistant professor Stanford University Medical School

And others to be released shortly.

Affiliations are for identification purposes only.