in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Dame Agatha Christie, the renowned writer of detective fiction, added her name to a protest letter to Pope Paul VI. With over fifty other literary, musical, artistic, and political figures, Christie — who’d recently celebrated her eightieth birthday — expressed alarm at the proposed replacement of the old Mass rite, which used Latin and elaborate ritual, with a new rite in English with simpler ceremonial.
Although Christie’s then husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, was Roman Catholic, she herself wasn’t. Christie didn’t defend the old rite, nor contest the new, on the grounds that either was good or bad for the Church. Rather, along with her fellow partners in crime, she argued that the old rite had inspired countless artistic achievements, including in poetry, philosophy, music, architecture, painting, and sculpture. These, she contended, made it a universal possession of human culture that the Church had no right to abolish. The letter had a positive outcome, securing an indult allowing the bishops of England and Wales to authorize the continued celebration of the old rite alongside the new. In 1984, a similar permission was granted worldwide.
Agatha Christie at mass | OUPblog
The Agatha Christie indult is a nickname applied to the permission granted in 1971 by Pope Paul VI for the use of the Tridentine Mass in England and Wales. Indult is a term from Catholic canon law referring to a permission to do something that would otherwise be forbidden.
Following the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI to replace the former, Tridentine liturgy in 1969–1970, a petition was sent to the Pope asking that the Tridentine form of the Roman Rite be permitted to continue for those who wished in England and Wales. Some English Roman Catholics had an attachment to the Tridentine Mass, as the Mass which had been celebrated by the English Martyrs of the Reformation and by priests in the years in which Catholicism had been subjected to sometimes severe persecution. However, the petition noted the exceptional artistic and cultural heritage of the Tridentine liturgy, and was signed by many prominent non-Catholic figures in British society, including Agatha Christie, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kenneth Clark, Robert Graves, F. R. Leavis, Cecil Day-Lewis, Nancy Mitford, Iris Murdoch, Yehudi Menuhin, Joan Sutherland and two Anglican bishops, those of Exeter and of Ripon.[1]
Cardinal John Heenan approached Pope Paul VI with the petition and asked that use of the Tridentine Mass be permitted. On 5 November 1971, the Pope granted the request. Supposedly Paul had read the letter and exclaimed "Ah Agatha Christie!" and so decided to grant the request; giving the indult its nickname.[2] Between then and the granting of the worldwide "universal indult" in 1984, the bishops of England and Wales were authorized to grant permission for the occasional celebration of Mass in the old form, with the modifications introduced in 1965 and 1967.[3]
Agatha Christie indult - Wikipedia