Chant with the Pope: Teaching Latin Chants to the Faithful, the Vatican Honors Pope Saint Paul VI's Request, Ignored Fifty+ Years Ago by Bishops

Ever hear of Jubilate Deo? Neither have most Catholics. Paul VI sent all the bishops a booklet by that title with a minimum number of Latin chants to teach Catholics to sing during Mass—in 1974.

On Sunday, May 11, 2025, three days after the election of Pope Leo XIV, the headline read, What a moment!!! Regina Caeli sung in Latin by Pope Leo. 💙

In addition, this video records him chanting the Pater Noster with the congregation during his first Mass as pope.

As a lover of Latin and the traditional Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony that is part of the Church’s treasury of sacred music, I was thrilled to hear our new pope’s slightly wavering but charming voice singing in Latin.

I didn’t realize it at first, but he’s not doing anything new. As I discovered, it’s not unusual for a recent pope, even after Vatican II, to sing Gregorian chant. This video has clips of the Pater Noster being sung by previous popes since 1939. (You can view the video by clicking the link further down this page.)

For some odd reason, the video included Pope Pius XII, even though he is not singing but reciting, in a strikingly emotional manner. By the way, Pope Saint John XIII, the pope who kicked off Vatican II, who also sings in the following video, had strong things to say against the absurd idea that the Church should remove Latin.

Also, most Catholics don’t realize this either: Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, only permits the increased use of vernacular languages in the liturgy, for the readings only. It didn’t mandate the end of Latin. Why that document was ignored in the reforms to the liturgy that followed the council is a huge topic, a sad story, which I can’t get into now.

In addition, what the document says about sacred music may surprise some readers, which I’ll also write more about further down.

Back to the singing popes: to hear Pope Saint John XXIII sing, go to 0:45. Next after him is Pope Saint John Paul II, the best singer of the lot.

Backstory about Popes Singing the Angelus

Unless a pope is traveling or incapacitated, every Sunday at noon, after an instructional talk, the pope publicly recites the Angelus in Latin; he greets pilgrims at the audience and ends his short appearance with an Apostolic Blessing.

Sometimes the talks at the Angelus audiences are weighty. For example, Pope Saint John Paul II introduced his Theology of the Body, which defends the Church’s teachings on the spiritual significance of marriage and speaks of the evils of contraception in light of natural law and sacred tradition, during one hundred and fifty-nine Angelus talks.

When a pope is in Rome, he usually appears on the balcony of his private study in the Apostolic Palace. The palace is a practical center for Vatican administration, and for a century, apartments in the palace were used as the traditional papal residence. Pope Francis chose to live in a suite in Casa Marta, another Vatican building, and we still don’t know whether his successor, Pope Leo XIV, will follow his example or make use of the papal apartments again.

During the summers, ever since Pope Urban VIII (who was pope from 1623 to 1644), about half of the popes have used Castel Gandolfo, thirty miles from Rome, as a vacation home where they went to escape the intense summer heat of Rome. (It is often said that in August, because of the high temperatures, there is nobody in Rome but the tourists and the people who cater to them.) At Castel Gandolfo, the pope would recite the Sunday Angelus from a window overlooking an inner courtyard or on a balcony facing the town's main square.

This article has the fascinating history of Castel Gondolfo as a papal vacation site, from its ancient origins as “the magnificent summer residence of the Emperor Domitian.” But I digress.

The custom of the pope reciting the Angelus on Sundays began under Pope Pius XII on August 15, 1954, the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary. During the Easter season, the pope prays the Regina Coeli with the people instead of the Angelus.

Perhaps riding on the wave of public enthusiasm for Pope Leo’s singing of Regina Caeli and the Pater Noster, the Vatican’s Sacred Music School, the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, has launched “Let’s Sing with the Pope.”

This bodes well.

But Really, the Church Has Been Trying to Get Everyone to Sing at Mass for 50+ Years.

Few Catholics realize this, but the Church wants everyone, not just the choir or trained singers, to know how to sing Gregorian chant in Latin. For one indication, Sacrosanctum Concilium states that "steps should be taken enabling the faithful to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass belonging to them" (§54).

Some terminology: The term Ordinary of the Mass refers to the five unchanging prayers: Kyrie (Lord Have Mercy), Credo (I believe, the first word of the Creed), Sanctus (Holy), and Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).

In 1974, fifty-one years ago, nine years after the close of Vatican II, Pope Saint Paul VI tried to get the bishops to make sure that Catholics were taught Gregorian chant. Paul VI's Jubilate Deo—Joyfully Sing Out to God is an English paraphrase—with simple chant settings of the Ordinary chants and responses, some other prayers beyond those I listed earlier, along with some other hymns — because he wanted every Catholic to learn the chants in that booklet. Jubilate Deo was an attempt to bring about the desire expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium that the faithful should say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Mass that belong to them. An accompanying letter to all the bishops and heads of religious orders said that the Gregorian chants contained in the booklet were to be considered the "minimum repertoire of plainchant." Pope Paul VI asked them to both teach the faithful these Latin chants and have the faithful sing them.

“This minimum repertoire of Gregorian chant has been prepared with that purpose in mind: to make it easier for Christians to achieve unity and spiritual harmony with their brothers and with the living traditions of the past. Hence it is that those who are trying to improve the quality of congregational singing cannot refuse to Gregorian chant the place which is due to it. ... In presenting the Holy Father's gift to you, may I at the same time remind you of the desire which he has often expressed that the Conciliar constitution on the liturgy be increasingly better implemented.”—From the letter accompanying Jubilate Deo.

Obviously, Sacrosanctum Concilium had not been implemented at all well, and by 1974, Pope Paul VI felt strongly that the "quality of congregational singing" needed improvement. It still does. The sad truth is that Jubilate Deo is practically unknown. The bishops pretty much ignored it.

BTW, some of the text in this article is adapted from a longer article I wrote about the history of singing in the Catholic Church before and after Vatican II, which you can read here:

Propers of the Mass vs. the Four Hymn Sandwich

In 2002, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) speaks about having massgoers sing some parts of the Ordinary in Latin.

"Since faithful from different countries come together ever more frequently, it is fitting that they know how to sing together at least some parts of the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin, especially the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, set to the simpler melodies" (GIRM §41).

Here is a story that gives a small example of how little these directives have been followed. At the end of a retreat in Menlo Park with Famili Sancti Hieronymi, the Family of St. Jerome, which is an organization of the faithful whose charism is to keep the Latin language alive by reading, thinking, speaking, and writing it, I went with the other retreat goers on an excursion to Mission Santa Clara, which serves as the chapel for Santa Clara University. Three lovely daughters and a handsome son of the retreat leader and founding secretary of the association sang a motet, in Latin of course, while we were in the chapel, and afterwards I started speaking with a young man outside who had been attracted by the singers and curious about the beautiful singing. We started talking about the purposes of the association and the use of Latin in Catholic worship. He told me he was a recent graduate with a history major, and I mentioned that at least some Masses that aren’t traditional Latin Masses are still celebrated with some parts of the Mass in Latin, such as the Sanctus. From the look on his face, I realized I was drawing a blank. Sanctus? “Haven't you ever heard Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus — you know, Holy, Holy, Holy?” I said. He did know Holy, Holy, Holy.

What is notable and lamentable about his lack of exposure to even the word Sanctus is that the Sanctus is one of the Ordinary chants included in Jubilate Deo. That a Catholic, even with a history major, can graduate from a Catholic university without any sense of the historic and current role of Latin in Catholic Church worship is one striking example of how official church teachings and the wishes of the popes about Latin are being ignored.

You can download a copy of the 1999 update of Jubilate Deo here.

Chant as a Sign of the Universality of the Church

Those of us who attended Mass before the switch to the vernacular in 1969 remember that we could go to Mass anywhere in the world and follow it because we had learned the unchanging parts in Latin. The common sacred language gave us a strong sense of our membership in a worldwide Church and of how we shared with Roman Catholics around the globe a universal liturgy.

The Vatican continues to encourage the use of Latin at Masses attended by people from many countries to promote unity.

Singing with the Pope is a hopeful step towards that goal. Jubilate Deo!

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