Annibale Bugnini

All you want to know about Annibale Bugnini

Styles of
Annibale Bugnini
Reference style The Most Reverend
Spoken style Your Excellency
Religious style Monsignor
Posthumous style none

Annibale Bugnini, C.M. (June 14, 1912–July 3, 1982) was a Roman Catholic prelate. Ordained in 1936 and named archbishop in 1972, he was secretary of the commission that worked on the reform of the Catholic liturgy that followed the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. He remains a very controversial figure among traditionalist Catholics because of this fact and due to allegations that he was a Freemason, though he denied these allegations during his lifetime and they have never been conclusively proven.

Contents

Early life

Annibale Bugnini was born in Civitella del Lago[1] in Umbria. In 1928 he began his theological studies with the Congregation of the Mission.[2] He was ordained priest on 26 July 1936 and spent ten years in parish work in a Roman suburb.[3] From 1947 became involved in the production of the missionary publications of his order and at the same time became the first editor of Ephemerides Liturgicæ. From 1949 he taught Liturgical Studies at the Pontifical Urban College (now the Pontifical Urban University), later becoming a professor at the Pontifical Lateran University.[4]

Serving Pius XII

On May 28, 1948, Pope Pius XII appointed him Secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform.[5] This body was responsible for the reform of the rites for the Easter Vigil (1951) and then for the whole of Holy Week (1955). It went on to reform the Code of Rubrics (1960) which affected both the Mass and the Divine Office before producing new editions of the Roman Breviary in 1961 and the Roman Missal in 1962.[6]

Vatican II and the Consilium

On January 25, 1959, Pope John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council and on June 6, 1960, Fr. Bugnini was appointed the Secretary of the Pontifical Preparatory Commission on the Liturgy. This body drafted the document that would become Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

Fr. Bugnini had been secretary of the Council's Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy. The Council - for which Fr Bugnini was appointed as a peritus - voted in the new Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, December 4, 1963. On January 3, 1964, Pope Paul VI appointed Bugnini as Secretary of the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy ("the Consilium" for short).[7]

After Consilium

On July 16, 1975, Pope Paul VI announced that he was dissolving the Congregation for Divine Worship and merging it with the Congregation of the Sacraments.

On January 4, 1976, the Vatican announced Bugnini's appointment as Pro-Nuncio to Iran. There, not only did he deal with the ordinary business of a papal nunciature, but he also studied and acquired knowledge of the country, its history, and its cultural, religious, and social traditions. The result was his book La Chiesa in Iran ("The Church in Iran").[8] Once he completed that book, he wrote the well-known resource, "The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975."

As Papal Representative to Iran, Bugnini tried in 1979 to obtain, in the name of the pope, the release of the American hostages. The elderly Nuncio met with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader, to deliver Pope John Paul II's appeal for the release of the hostages, but the Ayatollah rejected the appeal. The 52 Americans were eventually released on January 21, 1981, after 444 days in captivity.

Allegations of Freemasonry

In many circles, particularly in the traditionalist Catholic community, believe that Bugnini was a Freemason, a serious accusation against any Catholic, especially a senior prelate.[9] Some claim that this was why he was suddenly transferred from his Roman Curia job to a quite different posting in the Holy See's diplomatic service, and that it explains what they regard as the excessively modernistic course of the liturgical reform. The allegation remains fiercely disputed, and has never been conclusively proven.

While Bugnini was still working as Secretary of the Consilium, rumours started to appear in the Italian press that he was a Freemason.[10] Bugnini reported in his memoirs that a conservative cardinal told him in summer 1975 that a "dossier" showing him to be a Freemason had been brought to the Pope's desk.[11] The conservative Vatican prelate Cardinal Silvio Oddi is reported to have commented "I can swear that he was not a Freemason.... I remain convinced that these accusations were made up by someone in his office... who wanted to eliminate him".[1]

The Vatican made no immediate denial of either the April 1976 rumours concerning the grounds for his dismissal[12] or of the reports in June 1976 that not only Bugnini, but over 100 other Vatican officials (including cardinals) were Masons; but it later issued a blanket denial on L'Osservatore Romano of October 10, 1976: "Not one, we say, not one of the accused Vatican prelates has ever had anything to do with Freemasonry. We say this in order to rebut the possible accusation that silence signifies consent."[13]

The English Traditionalist Roman Catholic writer Michael Davies investigated the allegations, and claimed to have made contact with a priest who "came into possession of what he considered to be evidence proving Mgr Bugnini to be a Mason" and who had "this information placed in the hands of Pope Paul VI by a cardinal".[14] The Australian seminary professor Fr. Brian Harrison, while discounting the views of Davies, said that he too had heard, second hand, of a Roman priest who found evidence against Bugnini in a briefcase he left behind in a conference room.[15]

Death

Archbishop Annibale Bugnini died in Rome at the Pius XI Clinic on July 3, 1982,[16] the Feast of St Irenaeus. He had served as papal nuncio for the last six years of his life and died at 70 years of natural causes.

Overview

Bugnini's career was marked with political shifting to the radical left by the Roman Curia.[citation needed] In 1969 the Sacred Congregation of Rites (SCR) was dissolved and its liturgical functions were assigned to the new Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship (SCDW). Fr Bugnini was appointed Secretary by Pope Paul VI. However six years later in 1975 the SCDW was merged with the Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments (SCDS) to form the Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship (SCSDW).

Other

The personal secretary of Archbishop Bugnini was Archbishop Piero Marini who is now President of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses.

Notes and references

  1. ^ The Archbishop was born in Civitella de Lego, Italy, in 1912. How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini by Michael Davies
  2. ^ He was ordained into the Congregation for the Missions (Vincentians) in 1936 How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini by Michael Davies
  3. ^ He was ordained into the Congregation for the Missions (Vincentians) in 1936, did parish work for ten years How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini by Michael Davies
  4. ^ in 1957 he was appointed Professor of Sacred Liturgy in the Lateran University. How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini by Michael Davies
  5. ^ appointed Secretary to Pope Pius Xll's Commission for Liturgical Reform in 1948 How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini by Michael Davies
  6. ^ Michael Davies, Pope Paul's New Mass, (Angelus Press 1980), chapter xxiv, p.497, citing the official journal of the SCDW (as it then was) Notitiae, No.70, February 1972, pp.33-4. A chronology of Archbishop Bugnini's career can be seen at Archbishop Annibale Bugnini (Catholic-Hierarchy.org), retrieved June 15, 2006. See also Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy : 1948-1975, (The Liturgical Press, 1990), chh. 1-8.
  7. ^ Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy : 1948-1975, (The Liturgical Press, 1990), chap.5, pp.49-50.
  8. ^ Lengthy [www.jaas.org/edocs/v12n2/review.pdf review by Gladys Warda of La Chiesa in Iran (The Church in Iran) by Annibale Bugnini]
  9. ^ Continental European Freemasonry has long been associated with anti-clericalism, and Masonry has repeatedly been condemned by the Popes (see Catholicism and Freemasonry) since it would have entailed automatic excommunication under canon 2335 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law.
  10. ^ "Rumours soon began to circulate that the Archbishop had been exiled to Iran because the Pope had been given evidence proving him to be a Freemason. This accusation was made public in April 1976 by Tito Casini, one of Italy's leading Catholic writers. The accusation was repeated in other journals, and gained credence as the months passed and the Vatican did not intervene to deny the allegations." How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini by Michael Davies, AD2000, Vol 2 No 5 (June 1989), p. 17
  11. ^ Toward the end of the summer [of 1975] a cardinal who was usually no enthusiast for liturgical reform told me of the existence of a "dossier" which he had seen (or brought to?) [sic] the Pope's desk and which proved that Archbishop Bugnini was a Freemason. Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy : 1948-1975, (The Liturgical Press, 1990), chap.8, p.91.
  12. ^ "It is also very significant that the Vatican has never given any reason for the dismissal of Archbishop Bugnini, despite the sensation it caused, and it has never denied the allegations of Masonic affiliation. If no such affiliation had been involved in Mgr Bugnini's dismissal, it would have been outrageous on the part of the Vatican to allow the charge to be made in public without saying so much as a word to exonerate the Archbishop." How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini by Michael Davies, AD2000, Vol 2 No 5 (June 1989), p. 17
  13. ^ A response to Michael Davies' article on Archbishop Bugnini (June 1989)
  14. ^ I was able to establish contact with the priest who had arranged for the "Bugnini dossier" to be placed into the hands of Pope Paul VI, and I urged him to make the evidence public. He replied: "I regret that I am unable to comply with your request. The secret which must surround the denunciation (in consequence of which Mgr Bugnini had to go!) is top secret and such it has to remain. For many reasons. The single fact that the above mentioned Monsignore was immediately dismissed from his post is sufficient. This means that the arguments were more than convincing." Michael Davies, "How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini", AD2000, June 1989, retrieved June 17, 2006.
  15. ^ An internationally known churchman of unimpeachable integrity has also told me that he heard the account of the discovery of the evidence against Bugnini directly from the Roman priest who found it in a briefcase which Bugnini had inadvertently left in a Vatican conference room after a meeting.Fr. Brian Harrison O.S., 'A response to Michael Davies' article on Archbishop Bugnini', (letter to the editor), AD2000, August 1989, retrieved June 16, 2006
  16. ^ Papal Nuncio Bugnini Dies; Figure in Iran Hostage Crisis, Associated Press, from the New York Times, July 4, 1982


Preceded by
Enrico Dante		 Delegate of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations
1968 - 9 January 1970		 Succeeded by
Virgilio Noè
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annibale_Bugnini"

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