The progressive displacement of the Roman Canon in pontifical celebrations has become an observable fact that can no longer be interpreted as mere contingency. Under the pontificate of Leo XIV, the systematic choice of modern Eucharistic Prayers—especially the III—confirms a stable preference for the texts introduced after the liturgical reform of 1968, to the detriment of the venerable Canon that for centuries constituted the invariable core of the Roman rite.
This is not an isolated episode nor a one-off choice conditioned by pastoral circumstances. The reiteration in contexts of maximum solemnity, such as Palm Sunday, reveals a consolidated pattern: the Roman Canon has ceased to be the ordinary reference even in those moments when its theological density and symbolic weight would be most coherent with the celebratory content. Instead, more recent formulas are chosen, with a simpler structure and more agile execution, whose genesis responds to pastoral criteria proper to the second half of the 20th century.
This displacement is not neutral. The Roman Canon is not simply one more prayer among other possible ones, but the historical expression of the lex orandi of the Roman rite, with an organic development that refers back to the first centuries of the Latin Church. Its sacrificial language, its austere sobriety, and its continuity make it a privileged witness to the liturgical tradition. Replacing it with prayers of recent composition implies, in fact, an alteration in the very perception of liturgical continuity.
The preference for modern Eucharistic Prayers therefore suggests a certain way of understanding the liturgy: less anchored in the reception of a received tradition and more oriented toward celebratory functionality. The result is a practice in which the Roman Canon, far from occupying the central place that would correspond to it by its own nature, is relegated to an increasingly exceptional presence.
The pontifical practice, in this sense, is not irrelevant. Although it does not establish a legal norm by itself, it does exercise a paradigmatic function. What the Pope celebrates habitually ends up configuring, de facto, the horizon of what is perceived as ordinary or preferable. And in that horizon, today, the Roman Canon appears increasingly absent.