| U.S. News

Speaking Nov. 11 to the Archdiocese of St. Louis Gateway Liturgical Conference here, Cardinal Francis Arinze, the head of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, told the more than 250 people gathered that the Latin language is currently “in the ecclesiastical refrigerator.”

“Mass today,” the 74-year-old conference keynoted added, “should be in Latin from time to time.”

In his address on the last day of the conference, titled "Language in the Latin Rite Liturgy: Latin and Vernacular," Cardinal Arinze said the early church used Greek but it was "Latinized" in the fourth century, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"The Roman rite has Latin as its official language," he said. The great religions of the world all "hold on" to their founding languages: Judaism to Hebrew and Aramaic, Islam to Arabic, Hindu to Sanskrit and Buddhism to Pali, he said.

Latin "suits a church that is universal. It has a stability modern languages don't have," he said.

The cardinal also said it’s no small matter for priests or bishops from around the world to be able to speak to each other in a universal language and lauded the possibility that "a million students" gathered for World Youth Day every few years could "say parts of the Mass in Latin."

He suggested that larger parishes offer Mass in Latin at least once a week and that smaller, rural parishes offer it at least once a month. Homilies, he said, should always be in the vernacular.

Any priest can celebrate the Vatican II “Novus Ordo” Mass in Latin, though permission must be obtained from a local bishop to celebrate the Latin Mass in the old, Tridentine Rite.

Last month, Vatican officials said Pope Benedict XVI would soon loosen restrictions on the Tridentine Mass, allowing individual priests to celebrate it without the approval of the local bishop.