How Many Masses a Priest May Say in a Day

What Canon 905 Says §

It’s a Tuesday, and Father Smith has the 8:00 AM Mass. The funeral home calls about a funeral at 11:00 that morning, and the nursing home Mass is already set for 3:00. Before the office says yes, it needs to know how many Masses he may say in a day:

§1. Exceptis casibus in quibus ad normam iuris licitum est pluries eadem die Eucharistiam celebrare aut concelebrare, non licet sacerdoti plus semel in die celebrare.

§2. Si sacerdotum penuria habeatur, concedere potest loci Ordinarius ut sacerdotes, iusta de causa, bis in die, immo, necessitate pastorali id postulante, etiam ter in diebus dominicis et festis de praecepto, celebrent.

§1. Except in the cases in which the law makes it lawful to celebrate or concelebrate the Eucharist more than once on the same day, a priest may not celebrate more than once a day.

§2. If there is a shortage of priests, the local Ordinary may grant that priests celebrate twice a day for a just cause, and even, when pastoral need requires it, three times on Sundays and holy days of obligation.

Canon 905. Latin · The Holy See’s English · Our translation.

The first paragraph sets the rule and leaves its exceptions to the rest of the law, chiefly the Missal’s instructions. The second is the bishop’s to use when priests are few: a just cause is enough for a second Mass on any day, and pastoral need for a third, on Sundays and holy days of obligation only. The local Ordinary means the diocesan bishop, with his vicars general and episcopal vicars (canon 134 §2).

So Father Smith may take the funeral if his diocese’s faculties allow a second Mass, as each of the six below does. The nursing home Mass would then be a third on a weekday, which the canon doesn’t allow, so another priest needs to take one of the three.

The Days the Law Allows More §

The Missal’s instructions name the occasions on which any priest may celebrate or concelebrate more than once, because of what the rite or the feast means (GIRM 204):

• On Holy Thursday, a priest who has said or concelebrated the Chrism Mass may also say or concelebrate the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper.
• A priest who has said or concelebrated the Easter Vigil may say or concelebrate a Mass on Easter Day as well.
• On Christmas Day, every priest may say or concelebrate three Masses, each at its own time of day.
• On All Souls Day, every priest may say or concelebrate three Masses at different times, keeping the rules on how the second and third are applied.
• After concelebrating with the bishop or his delegate at a synod or a pastoral visitation, or concelebrating at a gathering of priests, a priest may celebrate again for the benefit of the faithful, and the same holds, within the law, for groups of religious.

A priest of a religious community or a chapter of canons who has to celebrate for the faithful may also concelebrate his community’s own Mass that day (GIRM 114). The Holy See’s declaration on concelebration of 1972 had already allowed both the community Mass and a second Mass after a gathering of priests, and it gave a pastoral conference, a congress and a pilgrimage as examples of such a gathering (Declaratio de concelebratione, nn. 1 and 2, AAS 64, 562).

None of these needs anyone’s permission: the law itself gives them. “For the benefit of the faithful” here doesn’t mean the Mass for the people a pastor owes on every Sunday and holy day of obligation (canon 534), which is a separate duty (the Mass pro populo).

Holy Thursday has two more rules. No priest may celebrate individually that day, or for the Easter Vigil (GIRM 199). And the local Ordinary may allow a second Mass of the Lord’s Supper for people who can’t take part in the evening Mass: Great Falls-Billings, citing liturgical law, gives its priests that faculty “if there is an urgent pastoral need.”¹ (Holy Week and the Mass book)

What a Diocese’s Faculties Allow §

Many bishops give this permission to all their priests at once, as Fr. Kenneth Doyle notes in his column.² Six dioceses put it this way in what they have published:

The canon gives no list of just causes, and the dioceses ask for different things. Alexandria counts “not only pastoral necessity but also lesser causes”: a priest’s wish to concelebrate at a special celebration, an urgent request for a Mass for a special intention, “such as imminent surgery,” or a Mass for a particular group. A third Mass there needs real necessity, “when three Masses must be celebrated for the needs of the faithful such as for a wedding or funeral.”⁶ Great Falls-Billings asks for a serious reason and no other priest to hand. Cathy Caridi, a canon lawyer, puts the usual test plainly: “a cause is just when it is reasonable,” and her example is a parish with a weekday morning Mass, an afternoon funeral and one priest to say both.⁸

Fr. Edward McNamara, a professor of liturgy, adds what a just cause isn’t: the priest’s own devotion. A second Mass, he writes, “is allowed only for the good of the faithful and is never a question of a priest’s personal devotion.”⁹ Alexandria’s first example, the priest’s own wish to concelebrate, sits a little apart from that, so follow your own diocese’s words. Sioux City’s judicial vicar reads the canon as three conditions together: a shortage of priests, a just cause, and the Ordinary’s leave.¹⁰

Does the Saturday Evening Mass Count as Saturday or Sunday? §

Saturday. In law a day runs from midnight to midnight (canon 202 §1), so the 5:00 PM Mass on Saturday is one of Saturday’s Masses, even though it’s the Mass of Sunday and keeps the Sunday obligation (canon 1248 §1). Alexandria’s faculties say so in as many words: “the anticipated Mass of Sunday counts as a Mass of Saturday, not Sunday,” and the same goes for the evening before a holy day.⁶ Fr. McNamara agrees, and Sioux City’s judicial vicar adds that on Saturdays the limits “are the same as for weekdays.”^{9 10}

So a priest with the usual faculty may say two Masses on a Saturday, not three. If Father Smith has the 8:00 AM Mass, a 2:00 PM wedding Mass and the 5:00 PM vigil, that’s one too many. Owensboro has met this case in writing. Its faculties explain that, under his power to dispense from disciplinary laws (canon 87 §1), the bishop “may permit priests to celebrate Mass three times on the day preceding a day of precept, provided the third Mass that day is for the day of precept.”⁵ Not every writer agrees that a bishop may go past canon 905 like this (the Questions below give both views), so ask whether yours has.

The count also runs the other way: a priest who says no Saturday morning Mass could, as Fr. McNamara notes, say the Sunday Mass twice on Saturday evening and three times on Sunday.⁹ How the vigil counts for offerings is a separate question, which dioceses answer differently (the vigil and the day’s one offering).

Concelebrating Counts §

Canon 905 says “celebrate or concelebrate,” so a Mass a priest concelebrates is one of his Masses that day. Alexandria spells it out: the word “celebrate” there “means both preside and concelebrate.”⁶ If the parochial vicar says the 8:00 AM Mass and concelebrates a 10:00 AM funeral, he has said two, and on a weekday he has no third.

Concelebrating is a priest’s own way of offering the Mass. Priests may concelebrate unless the good of the faithful calls for something else, and each stays free to celebrate individually, though not while a concelebration is going on in the same church (canon 902). The 1972 declaration put it in a line: it is fitting that priests celebrate or concelebrate, so as to take part in the Mass more fully and in the way proper to them, and not only receive Communion as lay people do (Declaratio de concelebratione, AAS 64, 561, our translation). A priest who has already said his Masses for the day can still be at the funeral without concelebrating, in choir dress or a surplice over his cassock (GIRM 114).

The exceptions above still apply: a priest who concelebrates at a gathering of priests may celebrate again for the faithful. Asked in 2025 about a pastor who concelebrates a funeral with his bishop, Fr. McNamara concluded that “whenever a priest concelebrates with his bishop, he may also celebrate another Mass for the benefit of the faithful.”¹¹ That is one liturgist’s reading, and it goes beyond the cases GIRM 204 names, so ask your diocese before the schedule depends on it.

A concelebrated Mass also changes the offering. A priest may not take an offering for a second Mass he concelebrates that day (canon 951 §2), and the 1972 declaration says the same of priests “who celebrate for the pastoral good of the faithful and concelebrate another Mass” (AAS 64, 563, our translation).

The Fast Between Masses §

Anyone about to receive Communion keeps an hour’s fast beforehand from food and drink, water and medicine excepted (canon 919 §1). A priest receives at every Mass he says, so the law relaxes the hour before his later Masses:

§2. Sacerdos, qui eadem die bis aut ter sanctissimam Eucharistiam celebrat, aliquid sumere potest ante secundam aut tertiam celebrationem, etiamsi non intercesserit spatium unius horae.

§2. A priest who celebrates the Most Holy Eucharist twice or three times on the same day may take something before the second or third celebration, even if an hour has not gone by.

Canon 919 §2. Latin · The Holy See’s English · Our translation.

The hour before his first Mass still binds him, and it’s counted to Communion, not to the start of Mass. Jefferson City repeats the rule in its priests’ faculties.⁴ Under the old discipline a priest saying two Masses didn’t even take the ablutions at the first, because that would have broken his fast.¹²

The Offerings When He Says More Than One §

Each Mass he says can be offered for its own intention, and each can come with its own offering. Except on Christmas Day he keeps the offering of only one, and the rest go to the purposes the Ordinary lays down (canon 951 §1). On All Souls Day only one of his three Masses may carry an offering: the second is applied for all the faithful departed and the third for the Pope’s intention, under Benedict XV’s rule of 1915 (Incruentum Altaris, I), which the Missal’s instructions still keep (GIRM 204). Dioceses differ on which offering he keeps and where the others go (which offering a priest keeps, diocese by diocese).

Planning the Parish Calendar §

The office often sees a priest’s day fill up first, so it can keep him inside the law:

• Ask the chancery for the current faculties and keep a copy with the Mass book. Note what they say about weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and whether they reach a priest from outside the diocese who helps on weekends.
• Count each priest’s Masses by the calendar day, every one he says or concelebrates: funerals, weddings, school and nursing home Masses, and the Saturday evening Mass, which is Saturday’s.
• Leave a Mass free. Chicago’s policy is that on weekdays “there shall not be more regularly scheduled Masses than there are priests assigned to the parish.”³ Sioux City’s particular law allows one scheduled Mass per priest Monday through Saturday and up to two on Sunday, so that he can still take “a funeral, a school Mass, a wedding, a nursing home Mass.”¹⁰ Davenport’s priest wellness document sets the ideal at “one Mass Monday-Friday with a Vigil on Saturday evening and two Sunday Masses.”⁷
• Leave time between them, so that neither the priest nor the people are rushed. Chicago ordinarily asks for “a minimum of one hour and thirty minutes between the starting times of Masses.”³
• Mark the hard days a year ahead. When Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday, as it next does in 2028, the morning’s Advent Masses and the evening’s Christmas Masses share Sunday’s three. Fr. Doyle answered a reader whose parish brought in a substitute priest on 24 December 2017 for that reason.² By the same count, in our reading of canon 202 §1, a Christmas Mass that begins before midnight is the 24th’s.
• When All Souls falls on a Saturday, as it next does in 2030, the Sunday vigil that evening is one of the day’s three. Fort Wayne-South Bend warns that three All Souls Masses and then the vigil “would be four Masses in one day and thus a violation.”¹³

How Memento Keeps This §

In Memento each priest’s record notes whether he may say a second Mass, or a third, under his faculties. When the office marks one of his private Masses as said, Memento names his other Masses that day rather than refusing the second, since whether he may say it is for the law and his faculties to decide. The ledger of offerings counts his Masses by the parish’s calendar day (canon 951, and what we do about it).