Vatican City, Jan 19, 2019 / 06:02 am
Pope Francis issued a motu proprio Saturday ending the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei and creating an office within the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith to focus on doctrinal dialogue with traditionalist groups.
For over thirty years, the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei has "facilitated the full ecclesial communion of priests, seminarians, communities or individual religious linked to Mgr. Marcel Lefebvre's fraternity, who wished to remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church, preserving their spiritual and liturgical traditions," Pope Francis wrote in the apostolic letter published Jan. 19.
"The institutes and religious communities that usually celebrate in extraordinary form have found today their own stability of number and life," the pope noted.
Pope Francis stated that the issues dealt with today by the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei are of "a predominantly doctrinal nature," and therefore the complete transfer of the pontifical commission's task to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith is with the desire that "these aims become more and more evident to the conscience of the ecclesial communities."