Timeline: The Latin Mass movement

The annual Catholic Identity Conference, organised by The Remnant, met near Pittsburgh from 2 to 4 October 2026. InfoVaticana described a programme bringing together Vaticanists, liturgists and several bishops, with a keynote by Bishop Athanasius Schneider under a title referring to a "hostile takeover" within the Church; The Remnant reported that co-founder Eric Frankovitch closed the event by urging traditional Catholics to stop attacking one another.

A Justice Department Weaponization Working Group report released on 28 August described the FBI's 2023 Richmond memo as a grave failure. According to The Daily Signal, it found the FBI had opened assessments on two Catholic priests, later concluding they posed no threat, and that work on the memo continued after headquarters ordered it removed. A 2024 review by the department's inspector general had found no evidence of religious bias.

In an interview published by The Tablet on 29 July, the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship was widely reported as saying Leo XIV would not change Traditionis custodes or return to Summorum Pontificum. Traditionalist outlets responded critically.

Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrated the closing Mass of the 44th Paris–Chartres pilgrimage; organisers had stressed unity with Leo XIV amid the SSPX crisis, and reports put attendance at a record of nearly or just over 20,000.

Pope Leo XIV met privately with sociologists Stephen Cranney and Stephen Bullivant, authors of a forthcoming Oxford University Press study of U.S. Latin Mass Catholics. The Holy See confirmed the audience without describing its content.

In a message signed on his behalf by Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and sent to the French bishops' spring plenary assembly in Lourdes, Leo XIV asked them to seek concrete solutions to include Catholics attached to the traditional Latin Mass generously while preserving communion. The Catholic Herald read it as a signal of openness rather than a formal change in the law.

Una Voce International and the Latin Mass Society said the SSPX plan made its regularisation more remote and appealed to Leo XIV on behalf of Latin Mass Catholics. Their leader Joseph Shaw later said the SSPX had "thrown a hand grenade" into the debate.

Leo XIV personally granted Cardinal Raymond Burke permission to celebrate Mass in the older form in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Altar of the Chair, for the annual Ad Petri Sedem (Summorum Pontificum) pilgrimage on 25 October 2025.

The Holy See confirmed the audience without describing its content. Christian Marquant of Paix Liturgique later said Burke used it to deliver a letter from some 70 traditionalist groups asking for a traditional Mass in St. Peter's; Leo gave permission, and Burke celebrated it there on 25 October.

Blogger took Messa in Latino offline citing an unspecified violation of its hate-speech policy, a day after the blog published an interview with Fr. Nicola Bux on the 2020 Vatican survey of bishops that preceded Traditionis custodes. The blog was restored on 23 July 2025; Google gave no explanation for either step.

The 43rd traditional-rite Pentecost pilgrimage organised by Notre-Dame de Chrétienté closed with Mass in Chartres Cathedral; CNA reported 19,000 participants, the most in its history, amid Vatican scrutiny of its liturgical arrangements.

A Justice Department inspector-general review of the withdrawn Richmond memo, reported in April 2024, found that analysts had conflated an investigative subject's religious views with his alleged domestic-terrorism activity. It found no evidence of malicious intent or that anyone directed investigation of Catholics because of their religion.

A rescript confirmed by Francis in an audience with Cardinal Arthur Roche on 20 February reserved to the Apostolic See the use of parish churches or new personal parishes for the 1962 Missal and permission for priests ordained after July 2021 to use it.

An FBI Richmond field-office product dated 23 January 2023, warning that violent extremists might be increasingly drawn to what it called radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology, was posted online by former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin on 8 February 2023. FBI headquarters withdrew it as not meeting bureau standards; later internal reviews faulted its failure to assess the bias of sources including the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The responses, dated 4 December 2021, limited use of the older Rituale to canonically erected personal parishes, excluded the Pontificale, and allowed parish-church celebrations only where no other venue is available and outside the parish Mass schedule.

The motu proprio declared the reformed liturgical books "the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite", made the 1962 Missal subject to the diocesan bishop's authorisation, barred new groups, and abrogated earlier norms not in conformity. Francis's accompanying letter cited a 2020 consultation of bishops.

The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei's instruction, approved by Benedict XVI on 8 April 2011, set out the rights of stable groups of faithful (nn. 15–19) and made diocesan bishops responsible for ensuring the extraordinary form for those who request it.

Benedict XVI permitted the 1962 Missal as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, effective 14 September 2007. His accompanying letter said the older Missal had never been juridically abrogated and described the two Missals as two uses of one rite.

On 19 April 2005, the second day of the conclave, the cardinal electors chose Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 78, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981, as the 265th pope; Religion News Service reported that he was elected on the fourth ballot. He later said he chose the name Benedict to link his pontificate to Benedict XV and to the cause of peace and reconciliation.

After the priests of the Priestly Union of Saint John Mary Vianney in Campos, Brazil — formed by followers of Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer — were reconciled with the Holy See, John Paul II erected the Personal Apostolic Administration of Saint John Mary Vianney on 18 January 2002, with Bishop Licínio Rangel as administrator. It remains the only personal apostolic administration and is dedicated to the traditional Mass; Bishop Fernando Arêas Rifan has led it since Rangel's death in December 2002.

Msgr. Gilles Wach and Fr. Philippe Mora founded the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, a community of priests using the pre-1970 liturgy, which later established its motherhouse and seminary at Gricigliano, Italy.

By its own account, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter was founded at the Abbey of Hauterive in Switzerland by about a dozen priests and some twenty seminarians who did not follow Archbishop Lefebvre after the 30 June consecrations; John Paul II erected it canonically the same year.

Two days after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's unlawful episcopal ordinations of 30 June, John Paul II's motu proprio stated that excommunication had been incurred, created the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, and asked for a "wide and generous application" of the permissions for the 1962 Missal.

The Congregation for Divine Worship's circular letter to episcopal conferences allowed diocesan bishops to permit Mass with the 1962 Missal for groups that did not question the legitimacy of the 1970 Missal, outside parish churches except in extraordinary cases.

A petition organised by the Latin Mass Society and presented to Paul VI by Cardinal John Heenan led to a concession, dated 5 November 1971, allowing bishops in England and Wales to authorise Masses with the former Roman Missal for particular groups. It is informally known as the "Agatha Christie indult".

In a letter dated 25 September 1969, Cardinals Alfredo Ottaviani and Antonio Bacci sent Paul VI a "Short Critical Study on the New Order of Mass", arguing that the new rite departed from the Catholic theology of the Mass formulated at the Council of Trent's 22nd session. The SSPX still publishes the letter; the Fordham Internet Modern History Sourcebook notes that the opposition did not stop the worldwide change in liturgical practice.

On Holy Thursday 1969, Paul VI issued the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum, promulgating the Roman Missal revised in line with Sacrosanctum Concilium as a revision of the Missal in use since Pius V's edition of 1570. It added three new Eucharistic Prayers and a three-year cycle of Sunday readings, restored elements such as the prayer of the faithful, and took effect on the First Sunday of Advent, 30 November 1969.