Leo XIV’s New Synod Appointments and the Limits of Rome’s Willingness to Listen
Pope Leo XIV has appointed two new officials to direct the next five years of synodal implementation. One helped organise Francis’s Synod; the other publicly praised Traditionis Custodes as the safe way forward. The appointments expose an uncomfortable contradiction: Rome speaks endlessly about listening to the People of God while continuing to restrict Catholics who wish to worship according to the Church’s inherited liturgy. If synodality means anything, those Catholics must be heard too.
There is a question which the Vatican’s latest appointments make almost impossible to avoid. What happens when Catholics tell a listening Church something its officials do not wish to hear?
On Friday, 30 October, Pope Leo XIV appointed Father Giacomo Costa SJ and Sister Elena Massimi FMA as the new undersecretaries of the General Secretariat of the Synod. Both will serve five-year terms under Cardinal Mario Grech. Father Costa helped organise the Synod on Synodality under Pope Francis. Sister Massimi is a professor of liturgy who previously praised Traditionis Custodes, the decree which placed sweeping restrictions upon the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. Their task is to help turn the Synod’s conclusions into established practice throughout the Church.¹
The Vatican describes these appointments as part of a continuing journey. Cardinal Grech welcomed Father Costa’s experience of the synodal process and praised Sister Massimi’s knowledge of liturgy and music. She understands, he said, how to “harmonise different voices without reducing them to a single note”.
It is a remarkably unfortunate analogy.
The Church has spent years explaining that every voice matters, that Catholics must listen to one another and that unity does not require uniformity. Yet the same ecclesiastical authorities have increasingly restricted the celebration of a form of Mass which nourished countless generations of Catholics. An ancient liturgical inheritance has been treated as a problem requiring exceptional permission, while the Church’s administrators speak enthusiastically about making room for different voices.
One could hardly invent a clearer test of whether the principle of listening is sincerely applied.
Sister Massimi’s appointment is particularly revealing. In September 2022, shortly after becoming president of the Italian Association of Professors and Scholars of Liturgy, she addressed Pope Francis during an audience marking the association’s fiftieth anniversary. According to an account subsequently published by her own religious congregation, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, she thanked Francis for three important liturgical interventions: Magnum Principium, Traditionis Custodes and Desiderio Desideravi.
The report described Traditionis Custodes as indicating la via sicura da percorrere — “the safe path to follow”.²
These words deserve attention. They come from a report published by her own congregation, not from an accusation invented by her critics. Strictly speaking, however, the published account is a summary rather than a complete transcript of her address. We should not pretend to know everything she said, still less everything she thinks today. Her precise intentions are not the issue. Her publicly recorded approval of the restrictive legislation is sufficient to raise a serious question about the outlook she brings to her new responsibility.
For many Catholics, Traditionis Custodes has been anything but a safe path.
It has meant the loss of a familiar place of worship, uncertainty about the future of established congregations, restrictions upon priests who wish to celebrate the older Mass, and anxiety among families who have organised their spiritual lives around the Church’s inherited liturgy. Where the older form had been peacefully accommodated, the new legislation made its continuation dependent upon a far more restrictive system of permissions. Subsequent instructions tightened that system further.³
These are not merely theoretical disagreements about liturgical scholarship. They concern the ordinary circumstances in which Catholics practise their religion.
A family attending the traditional Mass does not necessarily think of itself as participating in a movement. Its members may simply be Catholics who have found there a reverent celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, a settled pattern of prayer and a means of teaching their children the Faith. They may value the Latin prayers, Gregorian chant, silence, ceremonial and the continuity of worship across generations. The children learn to serve at the altar; the parents prepare them for Confession and Holy Communion; elderly relatives recognise the prayers they knew in youth. Then a decision made far away places that entire pattern of Catholic life in doubt.
To describe such people principally as a liturgical problem is already to misunderstand them.
Nor is the dispute simply between those who accept papal authority and those who reject it. The Church has always recognised the Pope’s authority to regulate ecclesiastical discipline. That authority is not in question. What may legitimately be questioned is whether a particular exercise of it is prudent, proportionate, just and genuinely conducive to the good of souls.
A disciplinary decision does not become incapable of criticism because a Pope has made it. Nor does the faithful Catholic who respectfully asks for its reconsideration thereby become disobedient or schismatic.
This distinction was central to Benedict XVI’s approach. When he issued Summorum Pontificum in 2007, he sought to provide a stable place for the older Roman liturgy within the life of the Church. He acknowledged that many Catholics who accepted the authority of the Council and remained faithful to the Pope and their bishops nevertheless cherished the earlier form of worship. More importantly, he recognised that the Church could not sensibly treat her own inheritance as though it had suddenly become objectionable.
“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too,” he wrote, adding that it could not suddenly be entirely forbidden or considered harmful.⁴
Those words expressed more than one Pope’s administrative preference. They articulated a principle of continuity which cannot be dismissed merely because the legislation through which Benedict applied it has subsequently been altered.
Benedict did not claim that every historical liturgical arrangement was immutable. He recognised legitimate development and upheld the authority of bishops. He also expected Catholics attached to the older liturgy to recognise the legitimacy and holiness of the reformed books. His policy was intended to overcome division, not simply to grant one constituency everything it wished.
The question raised by Traditionis Custodes is therefore not whether the Pope can regulate the liturgy. It is whether the pursuit of unity is well served by restricting a form of worship which the Church herself preserved, celebrated and transmitted for centuries.
Francis believed that the older liturgy had become associated in some quarters with rejection of the Second Vatican Council and the authority of the reformed liturgical books. There is no reason to deny that such attitudes exist in some traditionalist circles. They ought to be addressed wherever they genuinely occur. But the existence of particular abuses does not establish the guilt of everyone attached to the same liturgical tradition.
A priest who rejects Catholic doctrine must be corrected for rejecting Catholic doctrine. A congregation that refuses lawful ecclesiastical authority must answer for that refusal. Yet a family which wishes to attend the traditional Mass should not have its religious life unsettled merely because other people elsewhere have adopted unacceptable positions.
The proper response to specific wrongdoing is to address the wrongdoing. It is not to treat an entire liturgical inheritance as though its continued existence were itself the cause of division.
That is why Sister Massimi’s description of Traditionis Custodes as the safe path matters. It suggests approval of a policy whose effects upon ordinary Catholics must now be subjected to serious scrutiny. If Rome wishes to listen, those effects should be heard and examined, not simply explained away by reference to the intentions of the legislation.
The other appointment raises a different but connected concern.
Father Giacomo Costa is deeply familiar with the system he has now been appointed to help administer. He served as special secretary of the 2018 Synod on Young People and of the 2021–2024 Synod on Synodality. In accepting his new office, he explicitly recalled the journey begun under the guidance of Pope Francis. He is therefore not arriving as an outsider commissioned to assess the process afresh. He helped shape it.
Experience is not an objection in itself. An institution needs competent officials who understand its work. But it matters greatly whether those officials are expected to implement settled decisions or examine honestly whether the process through which those decisions emerged was itself adequate.
Nuntiatoria has addressed this question repeatedly. In Synodality for the Initiated, we examined the complicated structure of consultations, syntheses and assemblies through which the views of relatively small numbers of Catholics were eventually presented as expressions of the People of God. The English and Welsh consultation, for example, involved an estimated 30,000 participants from a Catholic population of approximately four million. That amounted to less than one per cent of the population being invoked.⁵
This did not make every contribution worthless. A handful of parishioners may identify a real problem which thousands have overlooked. Consultation can provide invaluable pastoral information without resembling a representative opinion poll. But the contributions of a small, self-selecting minority cannot simply be treated as the considered judgment of millions who never participated.
The further difficulty was the extraordinary degree of interpretation through which those contributions passed. Parish reports were summarised at diocesan level; diocesan reports were incorporated into national documents; national submissions were considered regionally and continentally; and the resulting material was processed once again before it reached the Roman assemblies.
At every stage, somebody decided which observations mattered, how they should be described and which disagreements required further attention.
The result was a process advertised as decentralised participation but dependent upon an increasingly influential class of ecclesiastical specialists. As Nuntiatoria subsequently argued in The Most Clerical Revolution in Modern Catholic History, changing the canonical status of the person holding the clipboard does not necessarily change the clerical mentality represented by the clipboard.⁶
A Church may invite everyone to speak while reserving to a much smaller number of professionals the power to decide what everyone has said.
Father Costa’s appointment reinforces the importance of this criticism. He knows the system because he helped construct and operate it. The question now is whether the system can receive criticism of its own assumptions, procedures and conclusions, or whether every objection will be absorbed into a recommendation for still more synodal formation.
There are also practical reasons why these appointments deserve more attention than routine personnel changes. The Synod’s work did not end with the publication of its Final Document in October 2024. The Vatican has established a programme of implementation extending through 2028, with diocesan and eparchial evaluation assemblies in the first half of 2027, national and regional assemblies later that year, continental assemblies in early 2028, and a final ecclesial assembly in Rome in October 2028.⁷
The new undersecretaries will be working during this decisive period. Their responsibilities will include assisting the preparation of assemblies and supporting the local Churches as synodal methods become incorporated into ecclesiastical life.
Moreover, the consequences may reach beyond meetings and reports. On 29 September, the General Secretariat published the final report of its Canonical Commission, proposing changes concerning Church governance, lay participation, particular councils, episcopal conferences and ecclesiastical accountability. The report even envisaged, in the longer term, a comprehensive examination of both Codes of Canon Law in the light of the synodal process.⁸
These remain proposals, not enacted legislation. Nevertheless, they demonstrate the scale of what is contemplated. Synodality is not being presented simply as an occasional opportunity for Catholics to offer advice. Its organisers are considering how to give it an enduring place within the Church’s legal and administrative structures.
The distinction between consultation and government therefore becomes more important, not less.
The Catholic Church is not a parliament in which revealed doctrine is determined by debate, nor is she a society whose essential character is discovered by asking members what they would prefer her to become. She is the Mystical Body of Christ, established by Our Lord, entrusted with His revelation and governed through the apostolic ministry. The bishops receive their authority in order to teach, sanctify and govern. The faithful possess genuine responsibilities within the Church, but neither bishops nor laity have authority to invent another Faith.
There is nothing objectionable about consultation properly understood. A good bishop listens to his clergy. A good parish priest knows the spiritual needs of his people. Parents, religious and lay Catholics can offer indispensable counsel concerning the circumstances in which the Faith must be practised and transmitted. Indeed, the Church’s own law recognises their right to make their needs known to their pastors and, within appropriate conditions, to express their views upon matters affecting the good of the Church. Canon 212 expressly protects that responsibility; canon 213 recognises the faithful’s right to spiritual assistance, especially through the Word of God and the sacraments; and canon 214 protects legitimate forms of worship and spiritual life, subject to the Church’s lawful discipline.⁹
These provisions do not confer an unrestricted entitlement to celebrate any historical form of the Roman liturgy wherever one wishes. Ecclesiastical authority retains its proper responsibility for regulating worship. But neither do they reduce Catholics to silent recipients of whatever pastoral arrangements their superiors happen to prefer.
There is a world of difference between legitimate obedience and the assumption that the faithful must never question whether an administrative decision has harmed their spiritual welfare.
And here Pope Leo XIV’s own words become important.
In an interview published in September 2025, he acknowledged that the Traditional Latin Mass had become a source of division, and that some people had used the liturgy as a political instrument. He also admitted that he had not yet had an opportunity to sit down with representatives advocating the Tridentine Rite. Significantly, he suggested that the synodal approach might provide a means of resolving the difficulty: “maybe with synodality, we have to sit down and talk about” the question.¹⁰
That was an invitation to hope that dialogue might replace mutual suspicion.
But what would such a conversation actually mean?
Would traditional Catholics be invited to explain what the older liturgy contributes to their spiritual lives, or merely be instructed why their attachment must eventually disappear? Would bishops who have successfully accommodated traditional congregations be asked about their experience? Would priests be permitted to describe the pastoral harm caused by sudden restrictions? Would young families be heard when they explain why the liturgy of their forefathers has become central to their Catholic identity?
Most importantly, would those responsible for the restrictive policy be willing to examine whether it has achieved its stated purpose?
Such questions are not unreasonable demands for special treatment. They are precisely the sort of questions one would expect a listening Church to welcome.
Yet the evidence from recent months gives traditional Catholics reason to remain concerned.
In July, Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, stated in an interview with The Tablet: “Pope Leo is not going to change Traditionis Custodes, and he’s not going back to Summorum Pontificum.”¹¹
That was Cardinal Roche’s assessment, not a new legislative declaration by the Pope himself. Nevertheless, it came from the cardinal principally responsible for the Holy See’s regulation of the liturgy. His statement appeared to leave little room for the reconsideration which Leo’s earlier remarks had seemed to suggest might be possible.
Then came the events surrounding the Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage in Rome this October.
As Nuntiatoria examined in The Prayer Was in the Letter, the organisers had requested permission to celebrate the traditional Mass in St Peter’s Basilica. That request was refused. They subsequently wrote on 8 September asking whether they might enter the basilica in procession, pray for the Pope at the Confession of St Peter and adore the Blessed Sacrament at the Altar of the Chair. Their letter identified the proposed time and the devotional purposes of the visit. The Secretariat of State replied on 30 September that the request could not be granted, without explaining why.¹²
A subsequent Vatican explanation maintained that the refusal concerned the procession and that separate permission should have been sought for prayer or adoration. But the organisers’ published letter expressly mentioned both. It remains possible that the authorities would have considered a different application without a procession; the correspondence does not establish that every alternative devotional arrangement was forbidden. What it does establish is that a request identifying prayer and Eucharistic adoration received an unfavourable answer without an accompanying explanation.
The contrast with the treatment the pilgrims received at St Mary Major was notable. There they were permitted a Pontifical Low Mass celebrated by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Approximately 1,500 pilgrims attended, and the organisers publicly thanked the basilica authorities for their hospitality and assistance.¹³
These were Catholics gathered in Rome to worship God and pray in communion with the Apostolic See. Whatever disagreements existed about the arrangements at St Peter’s, their presence surely offered an obvious opportunity to hear the experiences and concerns of faithful Catholics attached to the older liturgy.
The episode illustrates the problem with unusual clarity. Rome possesses an elaborate process through which Catholics are encouraged to share their experiences, hopes and difficulties. Yet when a substantial gathering of traditional Catholics sought permission for Mass and organised prayer at the centre of Christendom, the outcome was a series of refusals requiring subsequent explanations and disputed correspondence.
It is difficult to reconcile the enthusiasm for dialogue with such an experience of ecclesiastical administration.
This does not mean that every request must be granted. The Vatican has legitimate responsibilities for the order and administration of its basilicas. Pilgrimages cannot presume unlimited access or dictate their own ceremonial arrangements. But a refusal can be lawful and still be pastorally unwise; an administrative explanation can be technically defensible and still fail to satisfy those who have been affected by it.
A Church which promises to listen should be especially careful that its manner of government does not contradict the pastoral language in which it describes itself.
The problem goes deeper still. The sacred liturgy is not a departmental programme, nor is it principally a means of demonstrating ecclesiastical policy. It is the public worship of Almighty God, the action of Christ and His Church, ordered to His glory and the sanctification of souls.
The liturgical inheritance of the Roman Church was not created by modern ecclesiastical committees. It developed through centuries of worship, prayer, sacrifice and devotion. It was received, enriched, regulated and transmitted by successive generations of Catholics, including Popes who regarded its preservation as an essential duty of their office.
To speak of it principally as an obstacle to contemporary ecclesiastical unity is to risk confusing the inheritance with the disagreements which have subsequently arisen around it.
Certainly, the Church may reform liturgical disciplines. She may regulate their celebration. But the power to regulate worship must remain ordered to its purpose: the worship of God and the spiritual welfare of the faithful. The legitimate exercise of authority is not demonstrated simply by the ability to impose a restriction. It is demonstrated by the responsible exercise of that authority for the good of the Church.
This returns us to Cardinal Grech’s suggestion that Sister Massimi knows how to harmonise different voices without reducing them to a single note.
There is a legitimate meaning to his remark. Catholic unity is not a collection of unrelated beliefs and practices. The Church must preserve the integrity of the Faith, the validity and proper administration of the sacraments, and communion under lawful authority. Harmony cannot mean that every individual simply does whatever he pleases.
But Catholic unity has never required the elimination of every legitimate difference in liturgical expression. The Church possesses different liturgical traditions, disciplines and spiritual schools. Even within the Latin Church, her history is marked by a richness which cannot be reduced to the prevailing preferences of a single generation.
A choir cannot achieve harmony by dismissing the singers whose voices it finds inconvenient. Still less can it claim to honour musical tradition while attempting to silence the music from which its own inheritance developed.
There is also something profoundly disturbing about treating attachment to the Church’s older liturgy as though it were necessarily backward-looking, while presenting the indefinite continuation of synodal processes as an expression of spiritual maturity.
The traditional Catholic who wishes to preserve inherited worship is told that the Church must move forward. Yet the ecclesiastical administrator who wishes to preserve and expand a newly established system of committees, consultations and reports is praised for providing continuity.
Why is institutional continuity desirable in one case but liturgical continuity suspect in the other?
Why should a recently developed method of ecclesiastical consultation be treated as an indispensable feature of Catholic life, while forms of worship transmitted across centuries are regarded as expendable?
And why are Catholics repeatedly encouraged to speak freely about governance, participation and reform, while those who raise objections to liturgical restrictions so often find their concerns interpreted as resistance to the direction in which the Church has already decided to proceed?
These are not questions which disappear merely because they are uncomfortable.
Nuntiatoria has repeatedly argued that the problem with contemporary synodality is not the act of listening. It is the possibility that listening becomes a managed exercise in confirming conclusions already favoured by those organising the process. In When Listening Has a Predetermined Answer, we insisted that the Church must listen first to what she has received from Christ, rather than treating consultation as a means of discovering a new ecclesiastical identity.¹⁴
The appointments of Father Costa and Sister Massimi give that argument a new and practical urgency.
Their responsibility is not to invent the Church’s mission, nor to manufacture consensus around policies which Catholics may legitimately question. It is to assist the Pope and the bishops in their proper pastoral duties. If synodality is to be credible, its administrators must be prepared to receive testimony which challenges their assumptions, and to acknowledge difficulties which cannot be solved by further explanation of existing policy.
The Pope himself bears the ultimate responsibility. Leo XIV cannot be judged simply by the past opinions of those whom he appoints. He may retain experienced officials while pursuing a different approach, and the Synod Secretariat does not possess the authority of the Dicastery for Divine Worship. These appointments do not, by themselves, prove that the Holy Father has ruled out every possibility of liturgical reconciliation.
But appointments are acts of government. They reveal the people whom the Pope considers suited to carrying forward particular responsibilities. After the difficulties of recent years, it is reasonable to ask what this choice says about his determination to address the concerns of traditional Catholics.
The question is especially pertinent because Leo himself suggested that synodality might provide the means for such a conversation. The responsibility now rests upon him to ensure that the promised conversation is meaningful.
The faithful do not require another listening session merely to be informed that their concerns have been acknowledged. They require serious attention to the substance of those concerns. A Catholic family deprived of its familiar Mass does not need an official to explain that liturgical unity is important. It needs to know why the worship which sustained earlier generations is being treated as though its continued celebration threatens that unity. A priest who has celebrated the older liturgy faithfully does not need to be told that obedience is a virtue. He needs to understand why his desire to continue offering that Mass is regarded as a difficulty to be managed.
And bishops who have maintained peaceful relations with traditional congregations should not be presumed incapable of judging what best serves the spiritual welfare of their own people.
Above all, Catholics must not be expected to confuse reverence for papal authority with an obligation to praise every administrative decision made in its name. The Pope is the guardian of unity, not merely the custodian of the current ecclesiastical programme. His authority exists to confirm his brethren in the Faith, preserve the Church’s communion and ensure that the faithful receive the spiritual assistance necessary for their salvation.
That responsibility includes those whose preferred liturgical form is no longer fashionable among the specialists.
It is possible that Father Costa and Sister Massimi will exercise their responsibilities with genuine openness. It is possible that Pope Leo XIV will make room for a serious reconsideration of the pastoral consequences of Traditionis Custodes. Such developments would be welcome. But the measure of success will not be the number of reports produced, assemblies convened or assurances offered about listening.
It will be whether Catholics who disagree with the prevailing approach are actually heard, whether their evidence is honestly considered, and whether the authorities are prepared to change course when justice and pastoral prudence require it.
The Church is not called to become an endless conversation about herself. She exists to proclaim Jesus Christ, guard the Apostolic Faith, offer the Holy Sacrifice, administer the sacraments, sanctify souls and bring men to salvation. Synods, secretariats, commissions and consultations possess value only insofar as they serve those ends.
They do not become ends in themselves merely because their organisers describe them as the future of ecclesiastical life.
Pope Leo XIV has now entrusted five years of synodal work to two officials closely associated with the priorities of the preceding pontificate. One knows how the process operates. The other has publicly welcomed restrictions upon the Church’s inherited worship. Both have been asked to assist in establishing synodality more deeply within Catholic life.
Their work presents a straightforward test.
Will traditional Catholics be listened to as members of the Church whose spiritual welfare deserves serious consideration? Will the continued celebration of the older Roman liturgy be examined as a legitimate pastoral good rather than presumed to be a problem? Will Rome permit its professed commitment to listening to influence its actual decisions?
Or will the faithful once again be invited to speak, thanked for their contributions and informed that the direction has already been settled?
The answer will tell us considerably more about the future of synodality than another five years of carefully prepared documents.
For the Church does not demonstrate that she is listening by multiplying opportunities to speak. She demonstrates it by what she is prepared to hear — especially when the faithful ask her to preserve what she herself has handed down.
¹ General Secretariat of the Synod, Leo XIV Appoints Two New Under-Secretaries of the General Secretariat of the Synod, 30 October 2026.
² Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Suor Elena Massimi, FMA, è Presidente dell’Associazione Professori di Liturgia, 2022.
³ Francis, Traditionis custodes, 16 July 2021; Dicastery for Divine Worship, Rescriptum ex Audientia SS.mi, 20 February 2023.
⁴ Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops Accompanying Summorum Pontificum, 7 July 2007.
⁵ Nuntiatoria, Synodality for the Initiated: How Collegiality Became Permanent Process, 14 July 2026.
⁶ Nuntiatoria, The Most Clerical Revolution in Modern Catholic History, 21 August 2026.
⁷ General Secretariat of the Synod, Towards the Ecclesial Assembly of October 2028, 20 May 2026.
⁸ General Secretariat of the Synod, Proposed Amendments to Canons Concerning Ecclesial Governance, Participation of the Faithful and Accountability, 29 September 2026.
⁹ Holy See, Code of Canon Law, canons 212–214, 223.
¹⁰ Vatican News, Pope Leo Sees Role as One of Building Bridges, Avoiding Polarization, September 2025.
¹¹ Justin McLellan, Vatican Liturgy Chief Says Pope Leo Will Not Overturn Latin Mass Restrictions, National Catholic Reporter, 30 July 2026.
¹² Nuntiatoria, The Prayer Was in the Letter, 29 October 2026; Edgar Beltrán, Vatican Spokesman ‘Not Aware’ of TLM Pilgrimage Correspondence, The Pillar, 29 October 2026.
¹³ Fœderatio Internationalis Una Voce, Press Release on the Ad Petri Sedem Pilgrimage 2026, 26 October 2026.
¹⁴ Nuntiatoria, When Listening Has a Predetermined Answer, 21 August 2026.
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