ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — With incense wafting to an elevated pulpit and 13 altar boys looking on, the priest at the Church of Saint Agnes preached about merging old Catholic customs with fidelity to the Vatican this week — as Pope Leo XIV tackled a major challenge from a traditionalist breakaway group.
"Our Catholic faith is a living tradition, and there is a difference between being rooted and being stuck," the Rev. John Ubel said in homilies Sunday at English-language and Latin Masses.
Since the Second Vatican Council modernized the liturgy more than 60 years ago, celebrating Mass in the traditional Latin Rite that preceded those reforms has become a lightning rod of the theological, cultural and increasingly partisan divides among Catholics.
The conflict made global headlines when Leo declared Thursday that one traditionalist group — the Society of St. Pius X, founded to reject the Council's reforms and celebrate exclusively the old Latin Mass — had formally broken with the Catholic Church.
The Vatican excommunicated the SSPX bishops and priests and warned its thousands of faithful after the society consecrated four men as bishops in defiance of Leo.