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One of the most eminent poets and essayists of the last century in Italy, Tito Casini (1897-1987) devoted the last years of his life to a passionate protest against the desecration of the centuries-old Roman liturgy, the spiritual home of millions and a cultural treasure that could never be rivaled, let alone replaced. His defense of tradition was unique in mode, combining lampoon, lamentation, and lyricism in a philosophic poetry that transcends mere polemic. Perhaps the most unique of his works, The Last Mass of Paul VI (1970) imagines, in a striking combination of unrestrained fantasy and sober commentary, just how horrible things might get under a modernizing bishop of Rome, driven this way and that by the winds of fashion-and how that dire departure from ecclesial sanity could be reversed in a moment by the pope's resolute repentance as he humbly takes up the discarded yoke of wisdom. What Casini could never have imagined is that his nightmare scenario of a pope collaborating with Chinese Communists, rehabilitating Luther and the "Reformers," accepting divorce, secularizing religious rites, suppressing age-old tradition, ignoring or castigating the devout faithful, would someday come to full reality in one of Paul VI's successors. That makes this strange and alluring work even more terrifying and satisfying: it is fiction that has morphed into reality-all but the blissful dream of a pope who decisively reverses the damage he has caused. The Last Mass of Paul VI offers a key to interpreting what is happening in the Church right now and a plea for future restoration.
