1962 Mass: thirty-four dioceses authorized in 2025, as in 2024

In 2025, thirty-four dioceses received from the Holy See the authorization to celebrate Mass according to the Roman Missal of 1962 in a parish church. The figure is recorded in the Summarium Decretorum 2025, the annual summary of the decrees of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. It is identical to that of 2024.

The rite thus conceded is no recent favor. It is the Roman Mass that Saint Pius V, executing the Council of Trent, fixed “in perpetuity” and declared free for every priest, without term or permission. What the law recognizes of itself, a regime of authorizations subjects to concession, renewable and revocable. The novelty is not the Mass: it is the tally.

Twenty-four of the thirty-four decrees concern the United States. The series of earlier years gives thirty-five dioceses or jurisdictions in 2022, fifty-five in 2023, thirty-four in 2024. Of the 2025 decrees, seven were issued under the pontificate of Francis, who died on 21 April, and twenty-seven after the election of Leo XIV on 8 May; the practice did not vary during the transition.

Twenty-nine of the thirty-four merely renew, for two years, authorizations already granted to communities attached to the Missal of 1962. Among the American dioceses are Sacramento, Nashville, Lincoln, Davenport, Cleveland and the Archdiocese of Seattle. The very requirement of this Roman authorization stems from the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, which withdrew from bishops the freedom to establish these celebrations in a parish. The Summarium remains one of the few official documents showing how that text is in fact applied.

A figure of fifty-five parishes has circulated for 2025: it is in reality the 2023 total, not that of the past year, which the official source sets at thirty-four dioceses. We report the attested number and flag the discrepancy, without settling it beyond what the decree establishes.

Sources. Bull “Quo primum tempore” of Saint Pius V (1570), on the perpetuity of the Roman Missal; Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; Dom Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, on the Mass as the perpetual treasure of the Church.