This picture shows Pope Benedict XVI meeting Alice von Hildebrand in a private audience at the Vatican on 26 March. That was when he indicated, as we report today, that the indult, or permission, for universal celebration of the Tridentine Mass could be published this month. That meeting did however take place before the German bishops sent a seven-page letter outlining their objections. Another person who witnessed the audience tells me that when she asked Pope Benedict XVI to grant the indult, his precise reponse to her was: 'Something is coming in May.'
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What is particularly interesting about Alice von Hildebrand's report of her meeting with the Pope though is that she also met Pope John Paul II in the early 1980s, and suggested to him how wrong it was that the Tridentine Mass should effectively be banned, as it was after Vatican II. She said it was right to prohibit something evil, but not something good. She believes that this conversation might well have had an impact in persuading him to issue his partial permission soon afterwards. She repeated the same argument to Pope Benedict XVI and believes she saw an aknowledgement of the truth of this in his eyes. She is known as an advocate of the Tridentine Mass whose late husband's work is continued through the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project.
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Alice von Hildebrand's testimony does seem to offer new reason for hope to traditionalists this time. She is 84, older than Pope Benedict. As she told him at her audience, he better get on with it, 'otherwise I will miss the joy.' But the Pope seems to have strangely little real power. He is surrounded in the Vatican by people who oppose the Latin Mass. Cardinal Arinze is on the side of the German bishops, and Cardinal Sodano still won't get out of his [former] office...
Will we see it soon or will we not? The guessing, hoping and praying continues...
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