Pope Benedict XVI has proposed moves to liberalise the use of mass in Latin in a bid to heal a decades-old split in the Roman Catholic Church.
The pope distributed a document to senior bishops yesterday and a decree is expected to be published in coming days.
Pope Benedict will release a long personal letter to accompany the decree, the Vatican said in a statement.
The virtual abandoning of the Tridentine mass after the Vatican II Ecumenical Council in 1965 was one of the causes of a breakaway led by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970.
Archbishop Lefebvre was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988 and died in 1991.
Traditionalists want to celebrate the Tridentine mass according to a 16th-century ritual.
