Latin Mass at St. John Cantius, Chicago

Unless you are in the 70-years old plus range you too have probably never seen or heard a Latin Mass, also know as the Tridentine Mass. That is of course if you never attended one of the few churches that still administered the mass after Vatican II in 1965. Being born and raised Catholic, with twelve years of Catholic school added in there, I had never see one myself and I’m just a shade shy of 50-years old.

The mass is spoken in Latin and has a lot of the traditional features of mass you don’t see most Sundays. Witnessing it at St. John Cantius was a quite the experience, even for me. I had heard that recently the Arch Diocese of Chicago had been clamping down on the mass, after the Catholic Church had relaxed its views on the mass over the previous decade during Pope Benedict’s time. So there was a part of me that wax actually interested in making it to such a mass before it was possibly no longer around.

Luckily for me, the Chicago Tribune called me up and asked if I would photograph a class on the Latin Mass, as well as the mass itself at St. John Cantius on Chicago’s near west side.

Below is a link to Ron Grossman’s story that is part of the Vintage Chicago series the Tribune does. This rest of this post is photos from that mass that didn’t make the paper.