Bishop Schneider: Latin Mass Catholics feel ‘second class’
The faithful attending this year's Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage were barred and physically prevented from entering St. Peter's Basilica.
Bishop Athanasius SchneiderLifeSiteNews
- 13
Mon Oct 26, 2026 - 12:07 pm EDT
ROME (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in a homily during the Mass celebrated for the 2026 Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage, emphasized that the faithful devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) feel treated as “second-class” Catholics due to intense restrictions.
During his Saturday homily at the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major, first published in full by AdVaticanum, Schneider stressed that many faithful drawn to the TLM feel treated as “second-class” Catholics but still harbor no animosity or ill will toward the Church or the hierarchy.
The faithful attending the weekend’s pilgrimage, also called Ad Petri Sedem (“to Peter’s Seat”), were notably barred and physically prevented from stopping at St. Peter’s Basilica to pray on Saturday afternoon. Schneider was also denied permission to celebrate a pontifical High Mass in the Basilica.
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WATCH: Latin Mass pilgrimage physically prevented from visiting St. Peter’s Basilica
“A great number of Catholics worldwide, particularly the younger generation and young women, harbor a legitimate desire to participate in holiness in the traditional form. Pope John Paul II regarded the faithful’s desire for peace with dignity and form as their chief concern, urging bishops to respond generously to it,” Schneider said.
“Through this liturgical form, the faithful seek to unite themselves spiritually with the saints and their own ancestors. They desire to experience with their eyes, ears, and hearts that ritual form of the Mass which nourished and strengthened so many saints, martyrs, and confessors throughout their Christian lives.”
“Yet today, because of certain regulatory restrictions and even pastoral discrimination, these faithful – especially the young people – feel they are being treated as second-class Catholics. Nevertheless, they harbor no bitterness,” Schneider continued. “Instead, they continue to love their mother, the Church, even if, for the moment, they do not feel understood by that great Pope, by the Church of Rome. They continue to love the great Pope of the Church of Rome.”
Here Schneider appears to be referring to the treatment of the faithful who traveled to participate in this year’s Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage. As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, the Vatican Secretariat of State had denied permission for the bishop to celebrate the pilgrimage’s Pontifical Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday.
“The Secretariat of State sent the organizers a letter explaining that, at least for this year, permission for the Pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica will not be granted,” a source close to the traditional pilgrimage’s organizers told LifeSiteNews at the time. “The real reasons are unknown. It seems very strange that today the so-called LGBT Catholics can obtain a special Mass in St. Peter’s more easily than Catholics attached to the Church’s Tradition.”
READ: Confusion reigns over Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage clash with the Vatican
The Vatican Secretariat of State then went a step further and barred priests, religious, and lay faithful participating in the pilgrimage from entering St. Peter’s Basilica to pray on Saturday, October 24. Viral photos posted across social media on Saturday showed Catholic pilgrims being physically prevented from crossing St. Peter’s Square to enter St. Peter’s Basilica.
“May we nevertheless, this coming 24 October, enter the Basilica in procession, pray for the Pope at the Confession, and adore the Blessed Sacrament at the Altar of the Chair? The Basilica’s sacristy indicates to us that this would be possible at 1 p.m., should you grant us permission,” Abbé Claude Barthe, the chaplain of the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage, wrote in a September 8 letter to the Secretariat of State requesting that the pilgrims at least be allowed to pray at the basilica.
READ: Letter confirms Vatican ban on Latin Mass pilgrims entering St. Peter’s Basilica
Archbishop Paolo Rudelli’s response vaguely noted that “it is not possible to respond favorably” to his request:
Dear Father, in reply to your letter of 8 September, concerning the international pilgrimage Ad Petri sedem, I inform you that it is not possible to respond favorably to your request. Please accept, dear Father, the expression of my religious and devoted regard.
Viral photos posted across social media on Saturday showed Catholic pilgrims being physically prevented from crossing St. Peter’s Square to enter St. Peter’s Basilica.
In an interview with The Remnant‘s Michael Matt after the weekend’s pilgrimage, Schneider underscored that the Vatican’s treatment of traditional Catholics “in good standing” will “go down in history” as an “unheard-of scandal,” in light of their previous welcoming of a group of “LGBT Catholics” and the pro-LGBT female Anglicanarchbishop of Canterbury into St. Peter’s Basilica:
I think it is a scandal, and here it will go down in history as an unheard-of scandal where really Catholics in good standing, who obviously demonstrated their love for the Church, for the pope, came from all over the world … with little children, on such a long trip with hardships and young people, a lot of young people … coming really to go to the ‘house of the father,’ (the) Basilica of St. Peter. At least to pray there, for the pope, to sing the Credo, and even this was forbidden to them. It is an unheard (of) cruelty, a pastoral cruelty in the midst of such an increasing inflation of words of ‘synodality’ and ‘inclusiveness’ of all, and this the one group who simply loves the Mass as almost all the popes in the last millennium did, and the saints, and their ancestors. Simply for this reason are banned, feeling like lepers. … And I think it must be addressed, this scandal, without polemics but also to do justice, because the Church must be just; she must be a mother.
These restrictions marked a significant reversal from the 2025 pilgrimage, when the Traditional Latin Mass was celebrated at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica by Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. For several years before that, the pilgrimage had been unable to hold its Pontifical Mass inside the Vatican basilica following the promulgation of Traditionis Custodes.
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