Vatican City ? Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday removed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass, reviving a rite that was all but swept away by the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The decision, a victory for traditional, conservative Roman Catholics, came over the objections of liberal-minded Catholics and angered Jews because the Tridentine Mass contains a prayer for their conversion.

Benedict, who stressed that he was not negating Vatican II, issued a document authorizing parish priests to celebrate the Tridentine rite if a “stable group of faithful” requests it. Currently, the local bishop must approve such requests – an obstacle that supporters of the rite say has greatly limited its availability.

“What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us, too,” Benedict wrote.

The document upset Jews because the Tridentine rite contains a prayer on Good Friday of Easter Week calling for their conversion. The Anti-Defamation League called the move a “body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations,” the Jewish news agency JTA reported.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Benedict to publicly point out that such phrases “are now entirely contrary to the teaching of the church.”

In reviving the rite, Benedict was reaching out to the followers of an excommunicated ultratraditionalist, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who split with the Vatican over Vatican II, particularly the introduction of the New Mass celebrated in the vernacular.

The Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre in 1988 after he consecrated four bishops without Rome’s consent. The bishops were excommunicated as well.