Fr. John Ubel, pastor of the Church of St. Agnes, wears the traditional biretta hat and vestments as he sits between altar servers during one of the Catholic parish’s Latin Masses in St. Paul, Minn., June 28, 2026.
With incense wafting to an elevated pulpit and 13 altar boys looking on, the priest at the Church of St. Agnes preached about merging old Catholic customs with fidelity to the Vatican this week — as Pope Leo XIV tackled a major challenge from a traditionalist breakaway group.
“Our Catholic faith is a living tradition, and there is a difference between being rooted and being stuck,” Fr. John Ubel said in homilies June 28 at English-language and Latin Masses.
Since the Second Vatican Council modernized the liturgy more than 60 years ago, celebrating Mass in the traditional Latin Rite that preceded those reforms has become a lightning rod of the theological, cultural and increasingly partisan divides among Catholics.
While the Latin Rite was not the cause of the rift, the acrimony and the lingering suspicion that all those who like it are ultraconservative rebels is an open wound at St. Agnes, which isn’t affiliated with SSPX and has the church’s permission to celebrate Mass in Latin.
“For all who are attached to Tradition, I pray that they seek to maintain full ecclesial communion with our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV,” Ubel said July 2.
St. Agnes, a historic church founded for German-speaking immigrants in what’s now a diverse, central neighbourhood in Minnesota’s capital, offers one traditional Latin Mass per weekend, with the archbishop’s permission. It also has a modern version of the Mass in Latin and four in English.
Worshippers at the Church of St. Agnes receive Communion on the tongue and while kneeling at the altar rails, in the traditional custom, during one of the Catholic parish’s Latin Masses in St. Paul, Minn., June 28, 2026.
“I believe that St. Agnes is an example where the different forms of Latin Mass, and English, peacefully coexist, and, in many ways, I think it’s a model for how the church can respect various liturgical traditions and do so in full charity,” Ubel said in last Sunday’s homilies.
The archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Bernard Hebda, expressed hope that local Catholics who had been attending SSPX chapels would now turn to approved services.
“We are blessed that the same traditional Eucharistic liturgy beloved by those who have worshiped with the SSPX in the past continues to be celebrated in six locations throughout the Archdiocese,” Hebda said in a statement. “I am confident that those who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass could find a home here.”
In addition to being celebrated in Latin, the old rite Mass diverges from standard services in other ways: The prayers are different and longer, the priest celebrates at the altar with his back to the congregation, and Communion is given out only on the recipient’s tongue, instead of in the hand, while the person kneels at the altar rail. The priests also wear shorter “Roman-style” vestments and a black biretta hat. Very few U.S. Catholics regularly attend Sunday Mass in the “extraordinary form” that predates the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s, according to Stephen Cranney, a lecturer at Catholic University of America in Washington, and co-author of an upcoming book on the Latin Mass in the United States.
