Count Neri Capponi, RIP

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

Count Neri Capponi, a prominent Florentine legal scholar and canonist, and one of the great defenders of the rights of those attached to the traditional Mass, passed away on Thursday in his native city of Florence, Italy. Count Capponi taught for many decades at the University of Florence, while also serving on the marriage tribunal of the archdiocese; he was also recognized as a canon lawyer with the credentials to speak before the Roman Rota. He was one of the very few to argue insistently that the Roman Church’s traditional liturgy had never been formally abolished, a position which he sustained against all comers, and in which he was finally vindicated by Pope Benedict XVI in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. He was also a regular contributor to The Latin Mass and other traditionalist publications.

Inclína, Dómine, aurem tuam ad preces nostras, quibus misericordiam tuam súpplices deprecámur: ut ánimam fámuli tui Nerium, quam de hoc sáeculo migráre jussisti, in pacis ac lucis regióne constítuas, et Sanctórum tuórum júbeas esse consortem. Per Dóminum.

Incline, o Lord, Thy ear to our prayers, by which we humbly pray for Thy mercy; that Thou may set the soul of the servant Neri, which Thou hast commanded to depart from this world, in the place of peace and light, and command Him to share the lot of Thy Saints. Through our Lord…

Count Neri Capponi and Michael Davies at an Una Voce conference.