His Eminence Darío Cardinal Castrillón-Hoyos, who served the Church as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy from 1998-2006, and as Prefect of the Ecclesia Dei Commission from 2000-2009, passed away during the night of May 17-18, at the age of 88. All those who love the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite owe a great debt of thanks to Cardinal Hoyos, both for his work at the Ecclesia Dei commission, and for leading by example in helping the return of the traditional Rite as a regular feature of the Church’s life. In May of 2003, he offered us a tremendous sign of encouragement by celebrating a Pontifical Mass at the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome, the first Cardinal to celebrate the Mass in a Patriarchal basilica after the reform. Since then, he celebrated the traditional Mass publicly on many occasions, and constantly asserted that the pre-Conciliar Missal had never been suppressed, a thesis ratified by Pope Benedict XVI’s declaration that “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”
Deus, qui inter Apostolicos sacerdotes famulum tuum Darium, Presbyterum Cardinalem, pontificali fecisti dignitate vigere: praesta quaesumus: ut eorum quoque perpetuo aggregetur consortio. Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen.
God, who didst raise Thy servant the Cardinal Priest Dario to the dignity of bishop in the apostolic priesthood, grant, we beseech Thee, that he may be joined in the everlasting fellowship of the Apostles. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Cardinal Hoyos performing a diaconal ordination at the FSSP seminary in Wigratzbad, Germany in 2010. (Courtesy of the FSSP.)
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God, who didst raise Thy servant the Cardinal Priest Dario to the dignity of bishop in the apostolic priesthood, grant, we beseech Thee, that he may be joined in the everlasting fellowship of the Apostles. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
