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The Vatican’s liturgy department announced Tuesday that it had rejected the German bishops’ request to authorize lay preaching at Masses.
The Dicastery for Divine Worship said June 23 that it had informed German bishops’ conference chairman Bishop Heiner Wilmer, S.C.J., in a June 17 letter, of the refusal of his request for an indult to allow “in exceptional circumstances, a duly commissioned lay member of the faithful to preach in place of the homily during the celebration of the Eucharist.”
It said that “while expressing appreciation for the pastoral concerns that inspired the request, the Dicastery reaffirms that the current discipline cannot be dispensed from by means of an indult, since the reservation of the homily to a priest or deacon is not a merely disciplinary norm but derives from the very nature of the liturgy.”
The German bishops’ conference later published the DDW’s five-page letter rejecting the request, signed by the dicastery’s prefect, Cardinal Arthur Roche, and secretary, Archbishop Vittorio Francesco Viola, O.F.M.
The letter said: “This norm has been repeatedly confirmed by the Magisterium, especially in the instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (nos. 64-66), which expressly excludes the
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