The Confiteor at a Traditional Latin Mass. / Credit: James Bradley, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Vatican City, Jul 3, 2025 / 09:15 am (CNA).

A Vatican spokesman has played down the significance of recently leaked Vatican documents that appear to cast doubt on Pope Francis’ rationale for restricting the Latin Mass, calling the documents “partial and incomplete.”

The documents appear to show that bishops had a more favorable outlook on the Traditional Latin Mass than Pope Francis suggested when he issued controversial restrictions on its celebration in 2021.

Vatican journalist Diane Montagna published two excerpts from an internal Vatican report on the global consultation of bishops in a Substack newsletter July 1. The publication of the texts has sparked renewed controversy over Francis’ decision to restrict the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass at a time when some liturgical traditionalists are voicing hopes that Pope Leo will reverse or moderate his predecessor’s action.

Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, said July 3 the leaked information “presumably concerns part of one of the documents on which the decision [to restrict the Latin Mass] is based.”

Answering a question from CNA during a press conference on another topic, Bruni called published reports “a very partial and incomplete reconstruction of the decision-making process.” At the same time, he refused to confirm the documents’ authenticity.

The spokesman added that “other documentation, other reports, also the result of further consultations” were also taken into consideration with regard to restrictions on the Latin Mass.

An official at the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the department responsible for the application of Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis’ July 2021 decree restricting the Mass, told CNA on July 3 that the dicastery “has nothing further to add” to Bruni’s response.

The leaked texts, which summarize consultation results and selected quotations from bishops, have been hailed by critics of Traditionis Custodes as evidence that Pope Francis was misleading when stating his reasons for placing strict restrictions on the celebration of the Latin Mass.

Francis’ decree revoked the permissions granted by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2007 decree Summorum Pontificum.

“The claim that a majority of bishops around the world wanted restrictions on the ancient Mass [Traditional Latin Mass] was always dubious, but this document shows for all to see that it is completely false,” Joseph Shaw, president of the Latin Mass federation Una Voce International, wrote in a newsletter on July 2.

Shaw said the leaked documents show “only the views of the minority of bishops who really disliked the TLM were being acted upon. The majority view was ignored.”

Traditionis Custodes placed significant restrictions on the celebration of the Mass according to missals from before the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. In the decree, Pope Francis said he had taken into consideration “the wishes expressed by the episcopate” and “the opinion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

Pope Francis explained in a letter accompanying the decree that in 2020 he had asked the now-Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to carry out a survey of bishops around the world about the results of the implementation of the 2007 norms on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

“The responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene,” Francis wrote in the letter. He added that the intention of his predecessors, to foster unity among Catholics with diverse liturgical sensibilities, “has often been seriously disregarded” and the opportunity “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”

According to one of the leaked documents, a five-page “overall assessment” that according to Montagna was part of a never-published report more than 200 pages long on the results of the 2020 questionnaire, the consultation found “the majority of bishops who responded … and who have generously and intelligently implemented the MP [motu proprio] Summorum Pontificum, ultimately express satisfaction with it." But “some bishops state that the MP Summorum Pontificum has failed in its aim of fostering reconciliation and therefore request its suppression.”

The leaked assessment said some bishops stated they would prefer to return to the pre-2007 rules for the Traditional Latin Mass, when its celebration required permission from the local bishop, “in order to have greater control and management of the situation.”

“However,” the text continued, “the majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire state that making legislative changes to the MP Summorum Pontificum would cause more harm than good.”