CEBU CITY, Philippines – On Sunday afternoons, a disembodied voice speaking Latin reverberates at OAD Tabor Hill in Barangay San Jose in Cebu City. The phrase “Dominus vobiscum (The Lord be with you),” chanted in a singsong voice, crackles over the public address system.
The response, “et cum spiritu tuo,” (and also with you) is barely audible over the directions barked by parking boys in front of the Chapel of Holy Relics.
Inside, among rows of framed and encased relics, sit massgoers in their Sunday best, with women wearing veils.
This is the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), which is celebrated every Sunday at 1 pm in the Chapel of Holy Relics at OAD Tabor Hill. This is the only authorized Latin Mass celebration in the Archdiocese of Cebu, the biggest Catholic territory in the Philippines.
Cebu, considered the “cradle of Christianity” in the country, is one of a few dioceses that still allow the TLM, which is also called the “Mass of the Ages” by those who attend it. The liturgy is based on how Catholics celebrated the Mass before the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, a historic gathering of the world’s Catholic bishops in Rome, introduced reforms.
Only three priests are also allowed to say the TLM in Cebu: Monsignor Joseph Tan, the media liaison officer; Father Andrei Ventanilla, head of the commission on youth; and Father Luigi Kerschbamer.
The strictures are in keeping with restrictions imposed on the Mass by Pope Francis in Traditiones Custodes, an apostolic letter he published on July 16, 2021. Traditiones Custodes was criticized by those in the traditionalist Catholics circle as a suppression of the TLM.
Under Traditiones Custodes, the TLM or the Tridentine Mass cannot be celebrated in parochial churches, and the bishop has to authorize who can hold them.
That is why the TLM in Cebu is celebrated at OAD Tabor Hill, which is not a parochial church but one under the administration of the Order of the Discalced Augustinians or Ordo Augustiniensium Discalceatorum (OAD).
Pope Francis said in a gathering of Jesuits in 2023 that the old rite was being used in an “ideological way,” thus the restrictions.
Early this year, rumors were rife among traditionalist Catholics that Pope Francis was set to impose further restrictions on the Mass, spurring prominent British and American figures to write a letter asking him not to implement these.
The letters recall an earlier appeal published in 1971 in The Times in London and signed by notable persons like Agatha Christie. Graham Greene, and Yehudi Menuhin, asking Pope Paul VI for permission to continue celebrating the TLM. No further restrictions have been announced to date.
Apart from the use of Latin, the evident differences between the ordinary Mass and the TLM are:
- The priest, along with the people and his back to them, faces East toward God.
- Communion is taken by tongue and at the communion rail in front.
- Some of the prayers by the priest cannot be heard by the lay faithful because he is praying directly to God.
- Only the priest sings Pater Noster or the Our Father, and the massgoers only join at the last line, “Sed libera nos a malo” or “But deliver us from evil.”
- Female churchgoers often wear the veil.
People often ask whether mass goers understand the Latin Mass. They do. They are familiar with the liturgy after having attended Latin Masses for years. Newcomers can use missals that have Latin text on the left and their English translation on the right.
In Cebu, which has around 4.8 million Catholics according to 2020 census data, the youth comprise the biggest number of attendees to the Latin Mass. Of the 40 or so massgoers who fill the chapel during the weekly Latin mass, at least 60% are in their 20s or even younger. It mirrors a global trend of Latin Mass popularity among young people. – Rappler.com
Max Limpag, a freelance journalist from Cebu, is a 2024 Aries Rufo Journalism fellow.