A Benedictine monastery in Provence says restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass left it facing a threat to its sacramental survival.
In an August 16 interview with Ad Vaticanum, reported by LifeSiteNews, Dom Alcuin Reid, founding prior of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in France, said the community accepted ordinations from another Catholic bishop after its own path to ordinations was blocked.
Reid said Pope Francis’ 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, along with what he described as the “ongoing persecution” of the monastery’s founding bishop, Dominique Rey, prevented the monastery from receiving ordinations it needed.
“We would be a monastery that was fatally haemorrhaging, and we simply cannot permit that,” Reid said, according to the report.
‘A monastery without Mass’
The monastery celebrates ordinations according to the older rites, including minor orders. Reid said the situation created what he called “the threat of sacramental euthanasia.”
“A monastery without Mass — the beating heart of our life — is no living monastery at all,” he added.
After “prayer and consultation,” Reid said, the community decided to receive ordinations from another Catholic bishop. He acknowledged that the decision carried “canonical consequences,” but said the monastery judged that preserving its sacramental life was preferable to allowing it to die involuntarily.
Reid also said the monastery is working with the relevant authorities to regularize its situation.
Waiting on Pope Leo XIV
Asked whether Pope Leo XIV might remove the restrictions imposed under Traditionis Custodes, Reid said he could not predict “how, when or whether” the Pope would act.
He said he prays for Pope Leo daily and hopes the Pope will find a way to address what he called “the open wound in the liturgical life of the Church” inherited from his predecessor.
Reid also cited Cardinal Robert Sarah’s recent statement that Pope Francis’ motu proprio “now simply needs to be set aside.” Reid described Traditionis Custodes as “one of the last desperate and embarrassing salvos of a particular generation of narrow-minded Vatican II extremists.”
He contrasted the restrictions with Pope Benedict XVI’s earlier teaching that what previous generations regarded as sacred “remains sacred and great for us too.”
A continuing older-rite life
Reid said the monastery’s liturgical life has not changed. The monks continue to celebrate the older rites in their entirety, which he described as the community’s “raison d’être.”
According to the interview, the monks sing the eight traditional hours of the Divine Office each day, including Prime, and celebrate conventual Mass according to the older Roman and monastic uses.
The community also observes Ember Days and Rogation processions, publicly venerates relics on saints’ feast days, and celebrates Holy Week according to the pre-1955 rites. Reid said the monastery was “amongst the first” to receive Holy See permission to use those older Holy Week rites.
The monastery was established at the invitation of then-Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon. After first operating from a diocesan presbytery, the community purchased its current property in 2020: more than 80 acres outside Brignoles, including a 10th-century Romanesque church.
Reid said the monks are working with authorities on the “restoration, preservation and expansion” of the historic site.
