Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos A Great Son of the Church

Those attached to Tradition owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos who retired on 4 July – his eightieth birthday – as President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. Both as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy and, later, at Ecclesia Dei he was tireless in his work to restore orthodoxy. Here, Mgr Ignacio Barreiro sketches the cardinal’s inspiring life and achievements. Ad multos annos!

The Church has a duty of recognition towards Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, who for more than nine years has been President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. With courage and determination he was responsible for fostering the restoration of the Traditional liturgy of the Church. He has helped to develop within the Church a growing understanding of the intrinsic value of the Traditional liturgy and the importance of preserving it for the good of the Church. In his homily of 18 October 2008 at a Pontifical Mass celebrated in Rome for the twentieth anniversary of the Fraternity of St Peter (see Mass of Ages, February 2009), he declared, “This form is particularly suitable to emphasise the holiness and beauty of the rites of the Church.”

Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos was born on 4 July 1929 in Medellín, Colombia. After studying at the Seminaries of Antioquia (Medellín) and Santa Rosa de Osos, he obtained a doctorate in Canon Law at the Gregorian University, Rome. He was ordained a priest in Rome on 26 October 1952 at the Basilica of the Holy Apostles for the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Osos. Returning to Colombia he was parochial vicar in two rural parishes. Afterwards he was director of the Cursillo Movement and delegate for Catholic Action. He was also Professor of Cannon Law at the Free Civil University and in 1966 he was appointed Secretary General of the Colombian Bishop’s Conference.

He was ordained a bishop on 18 July 1971 as coadjutor of the Diocese of Pereira and succeeded as bishop of this diocese on 1 July 1976. From 1983 to 1987 he was Secretary General of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM). From 1987 to 1991 he was President of this Council.

In 1992 he was promoted to Archbishop of Bucaramanga. On 15 June 1996 John Paul II appointed him Pro-prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy. He was created cardinal on 21 February 1998 and appointed prefect of the Congregation, remaining in this position until 31 October 2006. He was appointed Cardinal-Deacon of SS Nome di Maria al Foro Traiano and elevated to the rank of Cardinal-Priest on 1 March 2008.

On 13 April 2000 he was appointed President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei and directed it with energy and purpose. One of the most important initial achievements of the cardinal was his intervention in the process that lead to the canonical regularisation of the important traditional group that Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer had established in the Diocese of Campos in Brazil. On 18 January 2002 in Campos, in the presence of the cardinal, a group of 28,000 Catholics, under the leadership of their bishop H.E. Licinio Rangel and of twenty-five priests, received full canonical recognition within the Church under the status of a Personal Apostolic Administration. Bishop Rangel was appointed Apostolic Administrator by the Holy See. This administration received, by decision of Pope John Paul II, the right to use the liturgical books that were in force in 1962 as their ordinary and proper rite. Its bishop received full jurisdiction over the members of the Apostolic Administration. His faculties are similar to a territorial bishop, so he is entitled to form seminarians, to ordain and to incardinate priests, and he has the power of establishing, under the universal legal requirements, societies of religious life.

On 18 August 2002 I had the pleasure of being present when Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos consecrated H.E. Fernando Arêas Rifan, using the Traditional Rite of the Church, as Coadjutor Bishop, due to the precarious health of Bishop Licinio Rangel. At the death of Bishop Rangel, on 16 December 2002, Bishop Rifan succeeded him.

Historic St Mary Major Mass

In a prophetic way that prepared the path for the Holy Father’s Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum of June/July 2007, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos declared in his homily at the Pontifical Mass he celebrated in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome on 24 May 2003: “The Rite of St Pius V cannot be considered to be extinct and the authority of the Holy Father has expressed his benevolent recognition of the faithful who, though recognising the legitimacy of the Roman Rite renewed according to the indications of the Second Vatican Council, remain attached to the preceding rite and find in it valuable spiritual nourishment in their journey of sanctification. On the other hand, the same Second Vatican Council declared that, ‘Holy Mother Church considers as having equal rights and honour the legitimate recognised rites, and she wills that in the future they be conserved and in every way fostered, and desires that, where it is necessary, they come to be prudently revised in an integral manner in the spirit of holy tradition and come to be given a new vigour according to the circumstances and necessities of our time’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n.4). The ancient Roman Rite hence conserves in the Church its right of citizenship among the multiformity of Catholic rites, both Latin and Oriental”.

The Mass in St Mary Major was the first in the Traditional Rite to be publicly celebrated by a cardinal in Rome since the Second Vatican Council and sent a very important signal on the permanent value of the Traditional Mass; however, a significant number of people within the Church continued to be reluctant to implement the right of the faithful to benefit from the Traditional liturgy of the Church. For that reason Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos decided to release a strongly-worded interview on 5 May 2004 in The Latin Mass magazine. The cardinal began by reaffirming what he had stated in his homily in St Mary Mayor that the rite of St Pius V continued to exist and had never been derogated. He made a very strong defence of the faithful who followed the ancient rite of the Church.

Five years have elapsed since the release of this interview and regrettably we still find clerics within the Church who make an uncharitable caricature of the Traditionalist faithful, so the cardinal’s defence retains its full value.

In his interview the cardinal paved the way for the Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum by recognising the multiplicity of difficulties found in many places despite John Paul II’s Motu Proprio, Ecclesia Dei of 2 July 1988. “After more than fifteen years of the Motu Proprio – and also taking into consideration the not inconsiderable difficulties that have arisen between those faithful and various bishops who remain perplexed or who are rather hesitant in granting the necessary permissions – the idea is constantly growing that it has become necessary to provide for the concession of the indult in a broader fashion that would correspond more with the reality of the situation. It is thought that the times are mature for a new and clearer form of juridical guarantee of that right which has already been recognised by the Holy Father with the 1988 indult.”

Regularisation

A significant milestone in the tenure of Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos was the establishment of the Institute of the Good Shepherd on 8 September 2006. This institute (composed of a group of ex-SSPX priests) was erected as a society of apostolic life of pontifical right having the use of the liturgical books that were in force in 1962 as their own proper rite, i.e., the Roman Missal, the Roman Ritual and Roman Pontifical, and the right to use the Roman Breviary published of 1962.

Less than two years later on 18 June 2008 the cardinal brought into canonical regularity the community previously known as the Transalpine Redemptorists, and who subsequently took the name of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer. This group has around eighteen members and two houses, one in Scotland on the island of Papa Stronsay in the diocese of Aberdeen, and the other in Christchurch, New Zealand.

During his historic visit to London on 14 June 2008 to celebrate a Pontifical Mass in Westminster Cathedral, he made a very important statement to the press: when asked if the Pope would like to see many ordinary parishes making provision for the Gregorian Rite, he responded: “All the parishes. Not many - all the parishes, because this is a gift of God. He offers these riches, and it is very important for new generations to know the past of the Church. This kind of worship is so noble, so beautiful - the deepest theologians’ way to express our Faith. The worship, the music, the architecture, the painting, makes a whole that is a treasure. The Holy Father offers to all the people this possibility, not only the groups who demand it, but so that everybody knows this way of celebrating the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.”

This is a particularly important statement, because if the Extraordinary Form is going to influence the restoration of the liturgy of the Latin Rite, it should not be confined to some few churches or parishes. This was one of the intentions that moved the Holy Father to promulgate the Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, as we can see in his letter to the bishops that accompanied the document.

As I have said, different public statements of Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos prepared the way for the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum on 7 July 2007. This document formally declares that the Latin Rite has two forms: the ordinary form promulgated by Paul VI and the Extraordinary Form, the Roman Missal promulgated by Saint Pius V and re-edited in 1962 by Blessed John XXIII. As a conclusion it states that this Missal had never been abrogated. This Motu Proprio contains a substantial clarification on the use of the Traditional Missal and banished all possible legal doubts about the legitimacy of its use. As a consequence of this new law hundreds of new Traditional Masses are being offered worldwide, and Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos has made a valuable contribution in the implementation of this new fundamental ecclesiastical law. As recently as 22 May the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei clarified that it applies to all Latin rites to set aside the difficulties encountered in its application in the Archdiocese of Milan and the Ambrosian Rite. Nevertheless, difficulties remain in many dioceses but we hope these problems will be resolved soon.

The question of the SSPX

One of the driving concerns of Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos has been the restoration of the Society of Saint Pius X to full canonical regularity. We can mention several of his efforts that are in the public domain. (Later, when with God’s assistance this long road comes to its desired end, historians of this process will be able to give a fuller account of these God-willed efforts.) We can, however, mention the welcome that the SSPX received in Rome during the Jubilee Year of 2000. On that occasion the cardinal was able to meet the bishops of the Society and have a valuable informal meeting with them.

Since then he has had many other encounters with Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior of the SSPX, and other members of the Society. He himself recounts how John Paul II received Bishop Fellay and Fr Michele Simoulin, who was responsible for the Society’s house in Albano Laziale, in his private chapel. With the election of Benedict XVI in 2005 those contacts increased. It should be remembered that on 29 August 2005 the Holy Father was accompanied by Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos when he received Bishop Fellay and Fr Franz Schmidberger. It was a very positive and useful meeting that strengthened the determination of all the parties involved to reach an agreement on the outstanding difficulties.

Afterwards the contacts continued and led eventually to the lifting of the excommunications of the SSPX bishops. This was announced on 24 January of this year. This generous decision of the Holy Father has been strongly attacked by some, using as a pretext the erroneous declarations of Bishop Richard Williamson on the subject of the Holocaust. These declarations have also been used as an instrument to attack Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos. There is a strong suspicion that many who ripped their vestments condemning the Church and the cardinal for this act of clemency of the Holy Father did so because they do not agree with the idea of a full integration of the SSPX within the canonical structures of the Church. These persons resent the positive influence that the Society will have within the Church when it is fully recognised.

In a recent farewell interview that Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos gave to the largest Colombian daily newspaper, El Tiempo, he declared, “In Ecclesia Dei, I set three goals for myself, and I was able to accomplish them. First, that all priests of the world should be able to celebrate the Mass freely, that the ancient Rite would be freed without opposition to the new one, and not being obligatory. Second, to make the richness of this rite known; and, third, to remove the excommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops, and to bring them closer to the Church once again”. There is no doubt that the cardinal has achieved these goals and that he should be strongly commended for this and for everything else that he has achieved.

We look forward to reading the book on the ancient Gregorian rite that the cardinal announced in this interview he plans to write.

We have to be grateful to the Lord for the determined sense of mission that inspired Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos during his tenure as President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. He was confronted by obstacles that many might have considered insurmountable, but he persevered with a quiet and patient spirit. He described this very well when he stated in his interview with The Latin Mass magazine: “I can say for my part that I never lose hope; I don’t like at all to surrender because I am convinced that patience, as St Therese of Avila used to say, achieves everything!”

[Taken from "Mass of Ages" August 2009, The Latin Mass Society's quarterly magazine]

fonte:http://www.latin-mass-society.org