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Leo XIV: sacred music is not an ornament of the liturgy
Leo XIV teaches that sacred music belongs to the liturgical action and calls for the musical heritage of the Church to be preserved.
On 19 August 2026, at the general audience held in St Peter's Basilica, Leo XIV devoted his catechesis to sacred music. He taught that it "is part of the liturgical action and not merely a decorative element of the celebration," and asked the composer to "know and preserve the musical heritage of the Church."
This truth does not wait to be proclaimed: it is fixed. As early as 1903, St Pius X taught that sacred music is an integral part of the solemn liturgy, ordered to the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful, and not an agreeable ornament added from without. He gave Gregorian chant the rank of the supreme model of the Church's song, admitted the organ, and set aside whatever is repugnant to the dignity of the holy place. The musical heritage is not kept as a museum piece: it is the praying voice the Church has given herself, and to break it is to break prayer itself.
What is sure in the catechesis lies in what it retains of this doctrine. Leo XIV tied his teaching to St Pius X's motu proprio of 22 November 1903; he attributed "a great value to Gregorian chant, without excluding other genres of sacred music," recalled the role of the pipe organ, and permitted the other instruments only on condition that they befit sacred use and the dignity of the temple. He willed the form "at once noble and simple," and the texts drawn first from Sacred Scripture, the liturgical books, and Tradition.
On these points the teaching does no more than repeat the ancient law. Where it appeals to the conciliar constitution on the liturgy and to a text later than 1958, it is not this novelty that founds the rule: the law of sacred song held before the Council, and it is that law which judges. St Augustine had said it in a phrase the pope took up: "Cantare amantis est," to sing is the mark of one who loves.
Sources. St Pius X, motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini (22 November 1903) on sacred music; St Augustine ("Cantare amantis est"); Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566).