For some, Vatican Council II had not started well. The great assembly of over 2000 Catholic bishops in Rome, inaugurated by Pope John XXIII in Oct. of 1962 was gathered to revitalized the Church worldwide.  Even before the Council began there had been concerns about the quality of the preparatory work that had been done under the direction of the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s central offices. Many draft texts had been completed, but they broke little fresh ground and one after another had been rejected by the council or its oversight bodies.  

The one notable exception, and one of the most widely known documents of the entire council, was Congregation of Rite’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. This is the story of a remarkable priest and how this seminal document came to be. .

Annibale Bugnini, was the fifth of seven children born of a sharecropper’s family living in a small wine-country town north of Rome. As a young man, he had always been attracted to worship services and entered the junior seminary of the Vincentian missionary order. He attended high school in Vatican City.  Following his ordination to the priesthood, Bugnini was assigned to serve a squatters’ district on the outskirts of Rome.  To make the Mass more meaningful to young people he introduced large placards giving responses to the priestly prayers.  

In the year’s immediately after World War II, there was little in the field of liturgy in which Bugnini was not involved.   He served on the editorial staff of the Vincentians’ liturgical magazine, Ephemerides Liturgicae in 1945, and three years later became its managing editor.  Bugnini began writing a steady stream of short liturgical articles for European and American publications and was a chief organizer of annual Italian week-long liturgical training sessions.  His interest in making worship more meaningful to ordinary Catholics, led him to write an early form of “dialog” Mass that within ten years, saw over a million copies in circulation.   

Fr. Bugnini was also expanding his contacts. He often frequented the office of the Vatican’s Congregation of Rites, and served as its unofficial publication arm in disseminating it liturgical instructions. He attended most of the European pastoral liturgy congresses and came to know leading liturgists of the time. He also began teaching pastoral liturgy at the Pontifical University Urbaniana, where his contact with African- and Asian-born students broadened his awareness of worship needs. 

The predictable rhythms of church life in Rome were upended in 1959, when Pope John XXIII unexpectedly announced his intention of convening an Ecumenical Council, the first in almost 100 years, and a far larger gathering than anything the church had ever experienced. In the following months, Vatican central offices scrambled to prepare proposals to use as discussion texts by council delegates and Bugnini was asked to serve as the secretary to the aging prefect of the Congregation of Rites Cardinal G. Cicognani, to assist in assembling and overseeing the Vatican’s Preparatory Commission on the Liturgy.  

Bugnini’s most significant contribution to the church during this period, however, was unsung. In 1948, Pope Pius XII invited him to serve as secretary to a small advisory group of prelates  whose advice he sought in liturgical reform matters. The existence of the group was a closely held secret, but for the next ten years Bugnini had an insight seat during the preparation liturgical, most notably the 1956 changes in the Easter liturgy. He seldom entered the discussions,  however, but organized the meetings and prepared summaries, skills in which he excelled.

Drawing on his many contacts, Bugnini assembled an impressive international team of members and advisors, many of whom had been working together in previous years. In all, 63 individuals, divided into 13 subcommittees, served on the liturgical preparatory group, inclluding a Chaldean, African, Brazilian, and Italian bishop.  Throughout the drafting process, Bugnini showed considerable skill in reconciling professional and national differences, as well as dealing with the diverse spiritualities of a half dozen religious orders. 

In a fourteen-month period, the Preparatory Committee completed its work on schedule, and its proposed Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was one of only two documents considered ready for presentation when the council convened on October 11, 1962. Bugnini had edited the final draft of an impressive document. Gracefully written, and drawn from Scripture and the early Church fathers, it blended theological principles with recommendations for action. Its tone was pastoral -catechetical tone differed significantly from the ecclesial legalize often found in curial statements.  The document was broad-ranging and dealt with the revision of the Mass, the liturgical calendar, church music, and sacred art, missionary guidelines, priestly training, and popular piety.   In terms of purpose, the proposed Constitution did not mince words: its expressed intent was  nothing less than a “Reform of the Liturgy.”  

Early trial ballots showed that the document had wide support of Council bishops, although a year would pass before a formal vote was taken. It  was a foregone conclusion, however,  that the document would be enacted by the Council, and in the fall of 1963, a final draft was approved by the council fathers by a vote of 2147 in favor and only four against. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was promulgated by Paul VI on December 4, 1963.

The following morning , headlines in the New York Times announced  that “Liturgy Reform” had been formally enacted by the pope. An English translation of the entire 13,000-word document was reprinted in that day’s paper.  Also included was the address of the Paul VI to the council in which he emphasized the magnitude of this achievement.  “Liturgy,” he explained, is “first in order of…importance for the life of the church,” and “the first school of the Church’s spirituality.”  What the council had accomplished would lead to a liturgy “simplified…[and] made more intelligible…pure…and genuine.”  The document was the first product of the great assembly, and one of its most important achievements.,  In the words of historian Massimo Faggioli it “was not only the chronological starting point of Vatican II but also the theological starting point.” 

Although thousands of suggestions made by Council fathers had been addessed in various revisions, the text approved by the council was substantially the same as the document drafted by the 63-member Bugnini group during the Council’s preparatory phase. 

The success of  The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy came not without personal cost to Fr. Bugnini. In October 1962, just as the original text was being submitted to the council Bugnini was stripped of his responsibility as Commission Secretary and relegated to the minor role of liturgical consultant. Many saw the move part of an effort of conservative curia officials to reassert control of the document.  The demotion, however, was short lived. Pope Paul VI, returned Bugnini to office andhe  oversaw most of the major subsequent liturgical decrees of the Council as well as the revised Roman Missal. He remained active in the Curia for the next six years, was consecrated an Archbishop in 1972, and two years later was made Papal Nuncio to Iran. 

Archbishop Bugnini died in Rome in 1982, and was buried in the town of his birth. His tombstone read simply: “Annibale Bugnini, bishop: he loved and cultivated the liturgy, he served the church.”  Nothing more needed to be said.

Larry Mullaly, April 30, 2022