The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales is a Catholic society dedicated to making the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, also known as the Tridentine Mass, more widely available in England and Wales. The group organised a petition for the Latin Mass in England and Wales which the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal John Heenan, presented to Pope Paul VI, who granted a papal indult in 1971. The current chairman is the academic Joseph Shaw. History The Latin Mass Society was founded in 1965 to seek the preservation of the rites of worship and the use of Latin, continuing the practice of the church from early times. Following a letter in The Catholic Herald (22 January 1965) by Hugh Byrne, calling for the establishment of "a national Latin Mass Society ... which will aim at campaigning for at least one Latin Low Mass in every church on Sundays." The founding meeting was on 10 April 1965; the first president of the society was the Catholic apologist and skiing pioneer Sir Arnold Lunn. Along with Evelyn Waugh and Hugh Ross Williamson, Lunn was one of the main figures involved in founding the Latin Mass Society. In the context of the New Order of Mass being introduced (it was celebrated from the first Sunday of Advent of 1969), the society had to decide whether to campaign for celebrations of the reformed Mass in Latin, or for celebrations using the older liturgical books. The question was debated at the annual general meeting of 1969, with the writer Hugh Ross Williamson speaking against the new rite and other speakers, such as the botanist Richard Hook Ritchens, in its favour. Williamson's arguments carried the day and a group subsequently left the society to set up the Association for Latin Liturgy in 1970, headed by Ritchens. Alfred Marnau headed the major project of organising a petition signed by 56 international cultural figures to seek permission for the continuing use of the older liturgical books. The then Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal John Heenan, presented this to Pope Paul VI who granted this permission, a papal indult, in 1971, under which any bishop in England and Wales could permit celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass for the benefit of a group of the faithful. Archbishop Annibale Bugnini describes the reception of the petition as follows. At an audience of October 29, 1971, Cardinal Heenan had told the