With a bit of a shove......

......and a fair wind behind it.......last Saturday's Consistory Mass in Rome........

.....Could have been a Traditional Latin Mass!

It was reverent, in Latin, holy and beautifully sung......but it was an Ordinary Form Mass and a concelebrated one at that.

The distinctions between EF and OF were really quite blurred on the surface; I would even go so far as to say that, if my local parish church offered an Ordinary Form Mass in the same manner, I would be there like a greased something or other.

So, is it too much to ask that the Holy Father celebrates Mass in the Extraordinary Form?

Will the Archbishop of Paris really swoon at the prospect?

And all those German and Austrian prelates, will they start smashing up the crockery?

I think that the only person who would really start chewing at the carpet if such a Mass took place would be The Tablet's Rome correspondent.

Breaking news.....Holy Father sets the seal on succession planning

Today, the Holy Father will complete his succession planning strategy with the appointment of six new Cardinals.

And, significantly, all six are non Europeans drawn from the USA, South America, Nigeria, the Middle East and the Indian sub continent.

The new Cardinals are:

 USA, Archbishop James Harvey, Abuja, Nigeria Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan; Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; Manila, Philippines Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle; Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal.

This will bring the number of Cardinals to 120, 67 of whom having been elected by Pope Benedict giving, hopefully, a more orthodox slant to the College.