PROVIDENCE — As pastor of Holy Name Church on the East Side, the Rev. Joseph Santos admits that he is starting to feel nervous.

After years of advocating for more widespread use of the traditional Latin Mass, which has been offered at Holy Name with the express permission of a series of bishops going back to the Most Rev. Louis E. Gelineau, the priest is about to see his dream fulfilled. Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI issued his long-awaited document, a motu proprio titled Summorum Pontificum, which authorizes priests to celebrate the once-suppressed Tridentine Mass publicly — without having to get the bishop’s permission.

The Rev. Joseph Santos, pastor of the Holy Name Church in Providence, is about to begin last Sunday’s Latin Mass. “There are about 20 priests who have asked me to teach it to them,” he says.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

With the roadblock removed, will priests who have long grown accustomed to the new Mass, sometimes called the Novus Ordo — which was promulgated by Pope Paul VI four decades ago to bring the Mass closer to people in the pews — dare to open their parishes to the old Mass once again? And if so, how popular will it be?

Time will tell, but Father Santos says he estimates there are 30 priests in Rhode Island alone who have expressed an interest in bringing the old liturgy to a younger generation who never had the opportunity to experience the old Mass in all its splendor. The old Mass is not simply the present-day Mass recited in Latin. It is more elaborate in both words and choreography.

“There are about 20 priests who have asked me to teach it to them, and I think I’m going to get them all together for classes. I find the most interest among our younger priests, which is remarkable because most priests today don’t even get Latin when they go to seminary.”

Those who follow the Latin Mass, also known as the Tridentine Mass, know that the nation’s Catholic bishops haven’t all been in favor of allowing the rite in their dioceses, even though Pope John Paul II directed them to be open to it. Many have either refused requests for their churches to have the Latin Mass or have strictly limited it, judging that the use of the Tridentine Mass might be used as a rallying point for those broadly opposed to the changes in the church that were ushered in in the early 1960s by the second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II. For many, the new Mass symbolized Vatican II teachings because it was the most visible sign of change.

Here in Providence, Holy Name’s pastor emeritus, the Rev. Joseph T. Gallagher, got permission in 1978 from Bishop Gelineau to celebrate the new Mass in Latin. The parish was given approval 13 years ago for the Tridentine rite after a trusted friend of the bishop convinced him that allowing the older rite would provide hope to Catholics who felt alienated from the church.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, expressed the view that it was a mistake to try to completely suppress the traditional rite. He has suggested that more openness to the rite would restore reverence and show a continuity with the church’s past. It might also bring back Catholics who had always favored the older Mass, he has said. At Holy Name, the attendance at the 11 a.m. Sunday Solemn High Latin Mass has gone from about 125 people as recently as seven years ago to an average of 250 people now from September through June — close to a third of them families with young children and another third older folks who remember the Mass as it once was. Others come for a range of reasons, including curiosity.

Among those at Mass last week were Patrick Fiorillo, 21, a college student from Franklin, Mass., and Edward Evans, 32, who usually makes the trek to Holy Name from Sturbridge, Mass., with his wife, Jennifer, and their three children, Alexander, 5, Amanda, 4, and John Paul, 17 months.

Fiorillo, a student at the University of Hartford, said he knew very little about the traditional rite until a friend invited him to attend a Latin Mass last November in New Haven.

It took some getting used to, Fiorillo said, but by the fifth time there he began to understand and appreciate the Mass in a new way. In the Tridentine Mass, which was codified and promulgated by Pope Pius V in the 16th century after the Council of Trent, many of the prayers are elaborate, emphasizing the sacrificial aspects of Jesus’ death on the cross and man’s need for atonement.

“I just think it offers more, and spiritually it is much more fulfilling,” Fiorillo said. “It goes a lot deeper in many aspects.”

Would he continue to visit Holy Name if he could find another Latin Mass closer to his home? “Yes, if my parish in Franklin began offering it, I would love to go there. But this is a great well-established community here, so I would be definitely coming back here.”

Evans, a systems engineer, said that while he was a lifelong Catholic, he knew little about the Mass until his brother-in-law invited him and his wife to check out an old-rite Mass in Albany, N.Y.

He finds it interesting that the new Mass had been put into place with the idea of making the Mass more accessible and understandable to the people, but thinks the reverse is more true. Unfortunately, he said, the words of the regular Mass have been made to sound so ordinary that the prayers almost sound banal. “There is nothing special, nothing mysterious about it anymore, and people wonder why should they even come.”

It’s not that way with the Latin Mass, he said. “Once people experience it I think they’ll want to come. Here there is more a feeling of being with God.”

Exactly how different are the prayers? These words of the Offertory in the two Masses provide some clues.

In the Tridentine rite, the priest prays: “Accept, O Holy Father, Almighty and Eternal God, this spotless host, which I, your unworthy servant, offer to You, my living and true God, to atone for my numberless sins, offenses and negligences; on behalf of all here present and likewise for all faithful Christians living and dead, that it may profit me and them as a means of salvation to life everlasting. Amen.”

In the newer, regular Mass, the priest says: “Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.”

The Rev. Richard Bucci, the pastor of Sacred Heart Church in West Warwick and a priest since 1973, says he’s not surprised that the Latin Mass is becoming popular with younger priests. The younger priests are not part of the generation of the ’60s, which tended to reject anything that came across as rigid, he said.

“I think one of the problems with the changes we saw in the Mass was that those who did the translation eliminated words like sacrifice, grace and priesthood. We’re told that in a couple years we’ll have a new translation that will be much better. When parishes have the new translation and the Tridentine Mass, I think people are going to have a renewed sense of the continuity of the church and teachings.

“Obviously not everyone is going to be enthused about it, and a pastor has to be sensitive to that,” Father Bucci said. “But I would consider having it on special occasions, such as Midnight Mass at Easter or the last Mass during the day at Easter, when people are looking for a religious experience that is uplifting.”

Among the staunchest advocates for a return of the Tridentine rite to Rhode Island have been the members of Una Voce Rhode Island, originally headed by George Bedford of Pawtucket. The Tridentine Mass was the one he experienced when he became a Catholic many years ago, and he thinks the rite will bring more people to the faith. Allen M. Maynard, president of Una Voce, makes the trip to Holy Name every week from North Carver, Mass., with his wife, Wendy, and their four children. He believes that having only one church in the state regularly offering the Latin Mass gives Catholics the impression that the celebration is an oddity that belongs in a museum. But if the use becomes more widespread, he said, “people will feel it is a legitimate thing to go to, not just something my crazy neighbors go to.”

rdujardi@projo.com