News has broken that this year’s Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage to Rome will not be granted permission to celebrate its principal Traditional Latin Mass in St Peter’s Basilica. There is no doubt that this is disappointing. Last year’s return of the pilgrimage Mass, celebrated by Cardinal Raymond Burke at the Altar of the Chair, seemed an important moment for Catholics attached to the traditional liturgy. This year Bishop Athanasius Schneider will instead celebrate at the high altar of St Mary Major and sharply different accounts are already emerging about what this means. The speculation is obvious: Is Pope Leo XIV continuing Francis’s restrictive policy, or is something more complicated going on?
Before rushing to judgement, let’s look carefully at what we actually know, what is being reported, and what remains unknown. Depending upon which report one reads, Pope Leo has either taken another ominous step towards becoming Francis II, traditional Catholics have once again been expelled from St Peter’s, or several thousand pilgrims have been offered the high altar of one of the greatest basilicas in Christendom because they had rather inconveniently become too numerous for the space they occupied last year.
As is so often the case with Vatican stories, the truth appears considerably more interesting than the headline. The essential facts are not really disputed. The fifteenth annual Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage will take place in Rome from 23 to 25 October. On Saturday morning the pilgrims will process to St Peter’s Basilica, pass through the security controls, enter the basilica and pray at the tomb of the Apostle Peter. They will then make their way across Rome to the Papal Basilica of St Mary Major, where Bishop Athanasius Schneider will celebrate the traditional Mass at the high altar at 3pm. The official programme confirms precisely this arrangement.
What will not happen is what happened last year. In October 2025, Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrated a solemn pontifical Mass according to the traditional Roman rite at the Altar of the Chair in St Peter’s, following permission granted under Pope Leo XIV. It was an extraordinary occasion, not least because the principal Mass of the pilgrimage had been excluded from St Peter’s in 2023 and 2024 following the restrictions imposed under Traditionis Custodes. The organisers publicly thanked Leo for allowing the Mass to return. This year permission for the Mass in St Peter’s has not been granted.
Obviously this is significant and there is little point pretending otherwise. The pilgrimage is called Ad Petri Sedem, “to the See of Peter”, for a reason. St Peter’s is not simply a particularly large and impressive Roman church which happens to have a nice dome. The pilgrimage is an expression of communion with Peter and his successor by Catholics attached to the ancient Roman liturgy and the celebration of its principal Mass in the Vatican basilica therefore possesses an obvious symbolic importance. In that sense, this year’s change is a setback.
