Posted on 10/13/2026 3:08:24 PM PDT by ebb tide
In an exclusive interview with AdVaticanum, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship speaks about his dicastery, the controversy over an Islamic chant at a Belgian university Mass, the future of Traditionis Custodes, the validity of SSPX sacraments and whether there was an appetite among bishops for change from Summorum Pontificum
Cardinal Arthur Roche is one of the most senior churchmen in the Vatican. He served as Secretary of the then Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments for almost a decade before becoming Prefect of the now Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2021. Now in his fourth pontificate as a bishop and his third as a member of the Curia, his influence over the liturgical direction of the Church is unparalleled.
The most contentious issue the Cardinal has had to contend with has undoubtedly been the extent to which the Dicastery permits the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. On this subject, he has taken a markedly different approach from the two prefects under whom he served as secretary, Cardinals Antonio Cañizares Llovera and Robert Sarah. For Cardinal Roche, the Church should worship with one voice by embracing the liturgical changes implemented following the Second Vatican Council, which he sees as an improvement on the Vetus Ordo.
Alongside his curial positions, Cardinal Roche is deeply personable and has a genius for friendship. He is a family friend of the Ballester family, whose eldest son is on track to become the Church’s first millennial saint, and carries with him in Rome many friendships from his time as Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and Bishop of Leeds.
In this exclusive interview, the Cardinal sat down with AdVaticanum to discuss Traditionis Custodes and Summorum Pontificum, the Quran being read at Mass in Belgium, the validity of the Society of Saint Pius X’s sacraments and how he sees the coming years after recently submitting his mandatory resignation upon turning 75.
AV: Your Eminence, you are a family friend of Pedro Ballester, the young man who is on course to become the first Gen Z saint. Could you share with us a memory that is characteristic of this young man’s exceptional spirituality?
☨AR: He was deeply full of life, and of life for others, which seemed to characterise everything about him. He had a very inquisitive mind. Like a scientist, he wanted to know the reasons for everything, and he found the ultimate reason for life in his vocation to suffer with the cross – which, for a young man, was an exceptional grace to be given, especially when he was just at the beginning of his university course, with the prospect of what I would have thought a very brilliant career afterwards. But it was that zest for life, and a natural inclination for living life to the full, with good humour and great generosity, that seemed to me to make him very special and very colourful.
AV: Your Eminence, this year marks five years in your position as Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, taking over from His Eminence Cardinal Robert Sarah. What are some of your best memories in this role?
☨AR: Above all, the great privilege of working hand in glove with two Popes on this whole question of the liturgy and the reform of the Second Vatican Council, which specifically pertains to the nature of our Dicastery. That above all, but also something which has been part of the diet of the Dicastery throughout my fifteen years here: meeting the bishops from different parts of the world, and learning how the Church is such a good servant of society, wherever it is, and often in very difficult circumstances. In fact, I think that nowadays there is hardly an ideal circumstance in which the Church is flourishing. Today, I think it flourishes everywhere with considerable difficulty, even when there is not an obvious persecution, but perhaps a considerable bias or prejudice against Catholicism in particular.
AV: You mentioned the Second Vatican Council. The principal document for your dicastery is Sacrosanctum Concilium. Something which might surprise the average Catholic – it states: “priests cannot change the liturgy on their own initiative”; “the Latin language in the Latin rite shall be retained”; “the faithful should be singing together in Latin”. How would you respond to someone who says that the 1969 Holy Mass promulgated by Pope St Paul VI is, at points, not a true reflection of what that initial document stated?
☨AR: I would say that would be a misreading of the tradition they have received. I have never known of that in my own priestly life. I have been a priest for 51 years, a bishop now for 25, and I have never not known a situation within a diocese where those elements have not been evident. In my own particular diocese of Leeds, Bishop Gordon Wheeler was very careful to ensure that, after the Council, the new Mass was celebrated somewhere in every deanery in Latin every Sunday. That showed how very wise he was as a pastor, to foresee some of the difficulties that may follow when you are not quite as generous with the application of the liturgy as that – and the reduction of the liturgy to something which it is not.
AV: Recently there was a case of a Catholic university in Belgium allowing a reading from the Quran to be chanted as part of their opening Holy Mass for the university year. AdVaticanum asked the university for a statement and was told that the decision was made in consultation with the local bishops. At the Mass, a layman gave the homily rather than the priest. In your position as Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, how would you respond to a case like that, where someone is including things that should not be part of the Mass?
☨AR: Completely misguided. It is a misunderstanding of what the celebration of the Eucharist is, in the first place. Secondly, to disregard what has been given to us in the reform of the liturgy is a very serious matter, because it suddenly becomes what we want the liturgy to be, rather than what the liturgy is in the worship of God. That sort of social adaptation is nothing but a trend which has no theological substance to it which says it all.
AV: In a letter explaining the rationale for Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis said: “With the passage of thirteen years I instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to circulate a questionnaire to the bishops of the world regarding the implementation of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene.” Diane Montagna published a report which alleges that the majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire stated that making legislative changes to Summorum Pontificum would cause more harm than good. From your position, do you think there was an appetite for change amongst the world’s bishops with Summorum Pontificum?
☨AR: Yes, I do. I have no doubt about that, and I hear that time and time again from bishops. I find that the traditionalist groups are much more noisy than most other parts of the Church, so they tend to get headlines which are much more spectacular – in a way, more colourful. But I have no doubt that the bishops were very concerned about the situation, partly because Summorum Pontificum was created to accommodate, and also to smooth the way for, the Society of Saint Pius X to return to the Church. That did not happen. It certainly did not simply smooth the way. It was used as a vehicle instead to promote a former liturgy rather than the renewed liturgy in some areas of the world, which was completely against the spirit of Summorum Pontificum.
So I think the Pope decided that he had, for the sake of unity, to call the Church back to the Council – and the Council is the highest form of legislation within the Catholic Church which you ignore at peril to your own soul, otherwise you are moving yourself away from the Church. If you reject that, if you resist it, you are edging yourself away from the centre of Catholicism. That is a very serious position to be in.
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Ping
I’m not Catholic, but from my vantage point, it looks as if the Pope, et al, are the ones “edging away from the centre of Catholicism”.
"Is the Pope Catholic?" is no longer a rhetorical question.
Yeah, uh, go to Hell your Eminence.
I begin to understand Martin Luther, a bit anyway.
Cardinal Roach is not a Catholic.
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