Jan 18, 2008 / 15:45 pm
According to Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican expert of the Italian daily "Il Giornale", Pope Benedict could soon approve a change in the Good Friday liturgy of the 1962 Missal to eliminate any possible offense to the Jewish people.
The change only affects the Missal of 1962, which was used prior to the liturgical reform and liberalized by Pope Benedict in his Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum”.
Tornielli writes that "the publication of the new text, completely reformulated, should be published in a few days," so that it can be used in the liturgy of this year's Holy Week. The change will eliminate the prayer in Latin that asks God to "liberate that (the Jewish) People from their darkness," as well as a reference to their "blindness."
Tornielli says that the change to be introduced by Pope Benedict is in line with the tendency "started already by Pope Pius XII, who made the then Congregation of Ritual clarify that the Latin formula ‘pro perfidis judaei’ meant ‘for the Jews who don't have the faith’," instead of "the perfidious Jews."