Names in the Bulletin

Why Parishes Print the Week’s Intentions §

When a parishioner asks for a Mass for her mother on the anniversary of her death, she wants to know the day, and so do her mother’s friends. Some parishes tell them in the bulletin.

One parish in California prints each week’s intentions in the bulletin and reads the names in the Prayers of the Faithful.¹ A parish in Iowa does both too, and puts a cross after the name of someone who has died.² A parish in Arizona gives the reason in its policy: the bulletin listing is there to tell relatives and friends about the intention.³

None of it is required. The canons on Mass offerings (canons 945 to 958) say nothing about a bulletin or an announcement. Fr. Edward McNamara, a professor of liturgy in Rome, answered the question in 2007: “While there are no universal laws regarding this topic, some dioceses have published norms with common-sense indications that all priests may take into account.”⁴ The Diocese of Brentwood in England, answering its parishes’ questions in 2018, says the same: “there is no requirement in law to publish a Mass intention, although it is generally regarded as procedure. An alternative is a private intention.”⁵

What the law does require is the book: the number of Masses, the intention, the offering given and the Mass once said, which the Ordinary examines each year (canon 958). The bulletin is a notice to the parish, and the book is the record. An intention kept out of the bulletin is still written in the book, and still goes to the priest, who applies the Mass for it.

What Canon Law Says About Good Name and Privacy §

A parishioner asks for a Mass “for my brother, who starts chemotherapy on Monday.” The priest may well want to know that. Whether everyone who picks up the bulletin should is another question, and the Code of Canon Law has a canon on it, among the rights of every member of the faithful:

Nemini licet bonam famam, qua quis gaudet, illegitime laedere, nec ius cuiusque personae ad propriam intimitatem tuendam violare.

No one may unlawfully harm the good name a person enjoys, nor violate any person’s right to protect their own privacy.

Canon 220. Latin · The Holy See’s English · Our translation.

Canon 220 doesn’t mention bulletins. But it names the two things a printed line about a living person can touch, and the privacy it protects is the person’s own.

Three dioceses in three countries have written guidance on this, each under its own civil law:

• The Diocese of Lansing, Michigan, in 2015. Its memo to parish secretaries notes that “the Church is exempt from the HIPAA Privacy Rule,” and that consent “is not legally required,” then asks parishes to get it anyway, “whether the name is to be verbally mentioned during Mass or published in writing.” It adds: “Keep the prayer request general, especially regarding personal health.”⁶
• The Diocese of Brentwood, England, in 2018. Under the GDPR, it lets a parish print the name of the person a Mass is for without asking, with “no other details about them (such as their contact details).” For the sick, the name alone needs no consent so long as nothing is said of the illness; reading their names at Mass, or putting them in the website’s copy, needs it.⁵
• The Archdiocese of Brisbane, Australia, in 2017. Elizabeth Harrington of its liturgy office tells how news of her minor surgery, given in confidence, was “included, without my permission, in the Prayer of the Faithful at Sunday Mass and among those to be prayed for listed in the parish bulletin.” Under Australia’s privacy law, she writes, when such news comes from private pastoral contact, “permission should be sought.”⁷

We can’t tell you what the law where you are requires, and none of these binds your parish. Ask your diocese whether it has guidance. Where all three meet is news of an illness given in confidence: none of them would print it without the person’s consent, and Lansing would not print the details at all.

A Bulletin Online Is Public §

The printed bulletin goes home with people who were at Mass. The copy on the website goes to anyone.

Lansing’s memo says to “Never publish prayer lists on a website unless it is behind a login screen for church members only.”⁶ Brentwood draws the same line for the sick, because the website copy makes their names available “to the public at large,” so, without their consent, all a parish’s website copy may say is “please pray for the Sick of the Parish.”⁵

Online lists also stay up. One parish in Ontario posts its week of intentions as a separate file, and its list for August 2023 was still online when we looked on 14 October 2026, as was this summer’s. A web search for “mass intentions for the week” that day returned both.⁸

So decide whether the website copy should carry the same names as the printed one. Some parishes will be glad for both to be public. If yours isn’t, Brentwood’s answer is a website copy without the names of the sick.

How to Word Each Line §

A bulletin line has one job: to say which Mass is offered for whom. Keep it short. One parish in Kansas limits each intention to two names or one group, and the Arizona parish asks people to leave out middle initials and titles, and to say whether the person is living or has died.^{9 3}

For the dead, the Iowa parish puts a cross after the name, and the Ontario parish a “+” before it.^{2 8} For the living, the Iowa parish prints “the intention(s) of” the person, and adds an occasion such as a wedding anniversary.² An illness stays out, as Lansing asks.⁶

Here is a week as we’d print it, with invented names:

• Monday, 8:00 AM: † [Name]
• Tuesday, 8:00 AM: For the intentions of [Name]
• Wednesday, 8:00 AM: Special Intention
• Thursday, 8:00 AM: In thanksgiving for the fiftieth anniversary of [Name] and [Name]
• Saturday, 5:00 PM: † Deceased members of the Smith family
• Sunday, 10:00 AM: For the People of the Parish

Wednesday’s line is a Mass whose intention the parishioner asked to keep out of print. The Mass is offered for the intention they gave, and the line shows the Mass is taken. Sunday’s is the Mass the pastor applies for his people on Sundays and holy days of obligation (canon 534), printed as such so readers can see why it carries no other name (the Mass for the people).

Two things never go on a line, in our view: the offering, and whether one was given. Priests are earnestly urged to celebrate for people’s intentions even when nothing has been given (canon 945 §2), and a bulletin that showed amounts would show who couldn’t give (wording for each occasion).

Should the Bulletin Say Who Asked? §

Parishes answer differently, and no canon settles it. A cathedral parish in Louisiana says in its policy: “The name of the person(s) requesting the Mass is not listed in the bulletin or announced at Mass.”¹⁰ The Ontario parish’s list for the week of 5 July prints “Req. by” and a name under most of its intentions, and “Req. by Anonymous” under one.⁸

Our suggestion is to ask. Some people like their name beside their mother’s; some would rather give quietly. If you print it, print it as they give it.

A Mass Applied and a Name Remembered §

Some parishes print a second list: the sick, the recently dead, those serving in harm’s way. One parish in Virginia reads its prayer requests in the Prayers of the Faithful and prints them in the bulletin for a week, on a form of their own, apart from its Mass intentions.¹¹ That’s real prayer. It isn’t a Mass applied for those people (canon 901), and the Holy See asked in 2025 that everyone be able to tell the two apart:

§ 2 In modo particolare, sia gli Ordinari che gli altri Pastori della Chiesa debbono assicurare che sia a tutti eminentemente chiara la distinzione tra l’applicazione per un’intenzione determinata della Messa, (ancorché “collettiva”) e il semplice ricordo nel corso di una celebrazione della Parola o in alcuni momenti della celebrazione eucaristica.

§2. In particular, both the Ordinaries and the other Pastors of the Church must make sure that everyone sees with complete clarity the distinction between the application of the Mass for a particular intention (even a “collective” one) and the simple remembrance in the course of a celebration of the Word or at certain moments of the Eucharistic celebration.

Decree of 13 April 2025, Art. 4. Italian · Our translation.

In a parish that prints both, the bulletin is where people will see the difference, or won’t. Put the two lists under different headings, “Mass Intentions” and something like “Please Pray For”, and never mix names from one into the other. The decree’s next paragraph adds that asking for, or even accepting, an offering for a remembrance of that kind is gravely illicit (Art. 4 §3), so nothing should be asked of anyone for a name on the prayer list (what the decree changed).

When a bulletin prints several names at one Mass, a reader may wonder whether that’s allowed. There can be lawful reasons for it (one Mass, one intention). Printing which are applied and which are remembered saves the question.

Reading the Names Aloud §

The California and Iowa parishes print the intention and read it at Mass too, and Lansing’s consent covers both.^{1 2 6} Neither is required. McNamara’s 2007 answer, drawn from the Diocese of Rome’s norms, is that “a mention in the bulletin or some other public notification is a legitimate option,” and that when the person who asked will be there, it’s good to name the person “either after the greeting at the beginning of Mass or as an intention of the prayer of the faithful.” The name “should not normally be mentioned during the Eucharistic prayer”; that, he writes, is best left for funerals, Masses at the news of a death, and significant anniversaries.⁴ In 2021 he added that the bulletin “is usually sufficient.”¹²

The Archdiocese of Grouard-McLennan in Alberta leaves the manner to the priest with the parish pastoral council: at the beginning of Mass, or in the Prayer of the Faithful “[but never in the Memento for the Dead in the Eucharistic Prayers]”, or in the bulletin, or on a list in the narthex.¹³ In the Prayer of the Faithful, the Missal asks that the intentions be sober and few in words (General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 71), which suits a name and nothing more.

A Bulletin Policy You Can Adapt §

What follows is our suggestion, written for a pastor to change as he sees fit, and to check against anything the diocese has published.

1. When we take a request, we ask whether the intention may be printed in the bulletin and read at Mass.
2. If not, the line reads “Special Intention.” The Mass is offered for the intention given, just the same.
3. For someone living, we print the name, “for the intentions of” or “special intention,” and an occasion if the parishioner wants it. We never print an illness.
4. For someone who has died, we print a cross before the name, or “For the repose of the soul of.”
5. One person, one couple, or one group to a line.
6. We print who asked only if they want it.
7. We never print an offering, or whether one was given.
8. Names remembered in prayer are listed apart from the Mass intentions, under their own heading, and nothing is asked for them.
9. The website copy of the bulletin carries [the same names / no names of the sick / no intentions].
10. Every intention, printed or not, is written in the Mass book and given to the priest who offers the Mass.

How Memento Keeps This §

On a parish’s online request form, Memento asks the parishioner whether the intention may be printed in the bulletin, with a box that starts ticked and the line “The Mass is offered just the same” beside it; the office records the same answer for a request taken at the desk. An intention kept out still prints, under the parish’s own wording (“Special Intention” unless the parish changes it), because it still holds that Mass. The bulletin Memento prepares never shows an amount (canon 945, and what we do about it).