Communion Received Kneeling and on the Tongue on Corpus Christi at the Lateran

During the sermon he gave during the Mass of Corpus Christi, on Thursday May, 22, in the square before the Basilica of St. John of Lateran, Benedict XVI affirmed: “To kneel before the Eucharist is to profess our liberty: he who kneels down before Jesus cannot and must not prostrate before any earthly power, no matter how strong it may be,” and he added: “we, Christians,  kneel only before the Blessed Sacrament, because in it we know and believe that we are in the presence of the only true God, who created the world, and love it to the point of giving it His only Son.” At the time of communion, the faithful who received the host from the hand of the pope, were invited to kneel on a prie-dieu and receive on the tongue.

In this respect, on several occasions, Archbishop Albert Malcom Ranjith, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has recalled that “the Mass is not a show,” and pointed out that communion in the hand “should be a practice to revise”: “I am convinced of the urgency of giving once more the host directly in the mouth of the faithful without their touching it,” and “of returning to the practice of genuflecting for communion as a sign of respect.” (Source: Apic)