By Agatha! Celebrities appeal to Vatican for Latin mass

Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and opera star Kiri Te Kanawa are among signatories to a letter to The Times.

Julian Fellowes on the set of Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and opera star Kiri Te Kanawa are among signatories to a letter to The Times uging the Vatican to save the Traditional Latin Mass.

The letter echoes a similar plea, published in The Times in 1971, led by mystery author Agatha Christie, novelist Graham Greene and violinist Yehudi Menuhin when the church was supplanting the old mass with the more prosaic Novus Ordo, normally said in the vernacular.

In response, Pope Paul VI reportedly said “Ah, Agatha Christie!’’ when given the letter. He granted English and Welsh bishops permission to allow the Old Mass to be said on special occasions. It was known as the “Agatha Christi indult’’ and it kept the Old Mass alive, until John Paul II and Benedict XVI relaxed the putative ban in the 1980s.

The new letter, published on Wednesday and signed by 50 ­people, including Catholics, non-Catholics and non-believers, said the Vatican push to banish the Old Mass from almost every church was “painful and confusing’’, especially for “the growing number of young Catholics whose faith has been nurtured by it’’.

In Melbourne a fortnight ago, more than 1000 people packed into the last Traditional Mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral after Archbishop Peter Comensoli, acting on Vatican orders, banned it from the cathedral where it was held on Wednesdays for 13 years.

The drive to stamp it out is being driven by the Pope and British-born cardinal Arthur Roche, who heads the Vatican’s dicastery for worship and Sacraments.

The letter in The Times said the Old Mass was a “cathedral of text and gesture’’, developed over centuries. “Not everyone appreciates its value and that is fine; but to destroy it seems unnecessary and insensitive in a world where history can all too easily slip away forgotten,’’ it said. “The old rite’s ability to encourage silence and contemplation is a treasure not easily replicated, and, when gone, impossible to reconstruct. We implore the Holy See to reconsider any further restriction of access to this magnificent spiritual and cultural heritage.’’

Signatories include V&A Museum director Tristram Hunt, Historic Royal Places chairman Nicholas Coleridge, former defence force chief Jock Stirrup, ­author Antonia Fraser, Bianca Jagger and Princess Michael of Kent. The letter repeats the 1971 letter’s argument that the old rite “belongs to universal culture’’ and “inspired priceless achievements by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs.’’

Scottish composer James MacMillan’s accompanying article deplores the Vatican’s ‘‘petty, philistine authoritarianism’’.