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Home · New Missal Coming Soon (Part 1)

There is a new Mass Missal coming out sometime next year. In view of this I will provide some background to its publication in coming months.

The first time the Church of the Roman Latin Rite had a Missal that was to be used universally was that published in 1570 by Pope Pius V after the Council of Trent. That Council was in response to the Protestant Reformation. Before that time various books and collections of prayers were used in different places. Now there was an attempt to have a certain uniformity throughout the Latin Church of the West. Even so some older Rites such as those used in Milan and Toledo were allowed to keep their own versions. The Churches of the East are another story entirely and have their own Rites.

Since then there have been eight editions of the Latin Roman Missal. Four of them have been in the last 50 years! Pope John XXIII published an edition just before the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Immediately following that Council Pope Paul VI published the entirely new Roman Missal in 1969. Again in 1975 he published a revised edition. These last two have been translated in to various languages as a result of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Then in 2002 Pope John Paul II produced another edition. This, of course, is in Latin.

Roman Missals are always a work in progress as new prayers and rituals are incorporated in new circumstances. For example Pope Pius XII revised the rites of Holy Week and Easter in the 1950s and the present Pope Benedict added prayers for newly canonised saints etc in 2008. Then there will be a need to include prayers for Mary Mackillop after her canonisation later this year.

Next time I will say a little about the English translations of the Roman Missal since the Second Vatican Council.
Fr Graham