The Daily Telegraph published this a month ago, but I've only just seen it. I used to be snooty about ecclestical Latin, but now it seems to me that, from the point of view of keeping the language alive, any Latin is better than none, and from the spiritual aspect, great spiritual texts in a language that most people understand only in wee glimpses (gloria in excelsis must suggest something to everyone) are a lot more helpful than third-hand sentimentalities set to fourth-rate tunes. After a day learning to sing plainsong a few years ago, I came away feeling that any church music other than Latin words sung to plainsong must be second-best. Anyhow, here's a bit of the obit.

 Father Oswald Baker
(Filed: 15/07/2004)

Father Oswald Baker, who has died aged 89, attracted national attention in 1975 when he insisted on using only the traditional Tridentine Latin Mass in his Roman Catholic parish of Downham Market, Norfolk, instead of the new liturgy imposed following the Second Vatican Council.
    

A significant number of priests was distinctly tepid about the pedestrian modern English substitute for the rite which had been introduced by Pope St Pius V in 1570; and some discreetly obtained permission to continue using the traditional Latin on the grounds that they were too old to change.

But the authorities in Northampton diocese felt that they had to act against Baker because he declined to offer the new Mass in a rural area where it was otherwise unavailable; they found themselves confronted by a steely rebel.

It quickly became clear that Baker enjoyed strong backing from the majority of his parishioners, who formed a "1570 Society" to support him. Catholics started coming from all over the country to hear his Sunday Masses; and lay people throughout the English-speaking world wrote in their hundreds to assure him of their wholehearted agreement with him.

The rest of the obituary is here.