Vatican City, 24 August, 2021 / 7:00 pm (ACI Africa).
After pandemic lockdowns led to the suspension of Catholic liturgies in many parts of the world, the Sunday Mass must be reaffirmed as the source and summit of parish life, the Vatican Secretary of State said in a message sent Monday on behalf of the pope.
“The suspension of liturgies during the long period of lockdown and the difficulties of the subsequent recovery confirmed what had already been observed in the Sunday assemblies on the Italian peninsula: an alarming indication of … the change of epoch,” Pietro Cardinal Parolin wrote in an Aug. 23 message for Italy’s National Liturgical Week.
The cardinal said that attendance at Sunday Masses in Italy is unbalanced in terms of the generations and cultures represented.
He said that parishes face difficulties in reestablishing the Mass “in being the true summit of all its activities and the source of missionary dynamism to bring the Gospel of mercy to the geographical and existential peripheries.”
“The Holy Father hopes that the National Liturgical Week, with its proposals for reflection and moments of celebration … may identify and suggest some lines of liturgical pastoral care to be offered to parishes, so that Sunday, the Eucharistic assembly, the ministries and the rite may emerge from the marginality towards which they seem inexorably to precipitate, and to recover their centrality in the faith and spirituality of believers,” he said.
