I learned this after I graduated from my medical studies, and established my family in Trier in 1993. This was when I first approached the now-deceased Bishop of Trier with a request to permit an "Indultmesse" here. A need was not seen by the bishop.
Thank God for the good priests and even municipalities in Trier that we found that offered a respectful form of the liturgy of Paul VI "ordinary" Mass. Our family found such a community, and there our three daughters were baptized. For these many years, our family has lived with both forms of the Roman rite - the ordinary and the extraordinary form. For many years we had to drive many miles to do this.
When the new Bishop (now Cardinal Marx) of Trier was installed in 2002, I began asking him for permission to celebrate the Holy Mass in the traditional rite in our diocese. During our subsequent correspondence, I collected about 300 signatures to support my request. After over two years of painstaking correspondence with the Diocese’s Consultancy Department, permission was finally granted at the end of 2004 for a single Indultmesse to be celebrated on Sundays and holidays in Trier. Permission was conditional, however, on the observation of many restrictions regarding place, time, inter alia, etc.
This was eleven years after my first request to the bishop of Trier.
In spite of the limitations established, I’m happy to report that the response to the Old Mass has been such that the diocese has agreed to provide a separate priest for pastoral care in the extraordinary rite in the Trier jurisdiction. Of course, we greatly rejoiced over the long-prayed-for Motu Proprio from the Holy Father regarding the traditional liturgy. In the Diocese of Trier, we hope and expect for a future of "normality“ in the usus antiquior of the one Roman rite.
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