In “Summorum Pontificum,” Benedict noted that the church’s traditional liturgy introduced the barbarian nations of Europe not only to the Catholic faith but also to “the treasures of worship and culture amassed by the Romans.” It has a kind of “romanitas” that complements traditional cultures of all kinds.

This idea appeals to Edwin Mary Akaedu, a parishioner in this southeastern Nigerian town. He cites the parallels between the Latin Mass and the traditions of his Igbo tribe and views claims that the vernacular Mass can be more easily “inculturated” as misleading. “The idea of inculturation was not native,” he told me. “It was introduced. Like every Western fashion, it was quickly taken up by everyone.”

Mr. Akaedu said that at less traditional parishes he did not receive clear moral direction. “But here I was told: This is the right way to live, this is what God wants.”

Perpetua Iwuala, 16, told me the same thing: “The priests here tell you everything you need to know. They teach you the Commandments. At other parishes they don’t.”

Among the worshipers going up for communion in bright home-sewn garments printed with images of Mary and the saints, one boy stands out. He wears a gray T-shirt that reads, “Clan McLean Reunion, Fredericksburg, Va., 1997.” It looks like a cast-off, something discarded by others but taken up here — just like the Latin Mass. When the liturgy is ended, children run around the churchyard crying out to each other: “Sixtus! Perpetua! Felicitas!” It could be a roll call of old Roman worthies. When a priest from a neighboring parish criticizes the traditional liturgy, a girl exclaims, “Father is a modernist!”

Catholics elsewhere have largely dispensed with condemnations of modernism, along with the Latin Mass. There is something biblical in the way these things have found new life in Nigeria. Just as Jacob displaces Esau, so one nation outpaces another in devotion. For this to work, one must have the humility to accept an inheritance. Christianity is a hand-me-down affair. It bears the marks of those who came before.

Shortly after his conversion to Catholicism, Evelyn Waugh wrote a story about a visitor to London who is cast 500 years into the future, when the city is reduced to a cluster of huts. The English inhabitants are illiterate savages who cower as colonizers from Africa motor up and down the Thames. The traveler is disoriented, until his eyes fall on something he knows. “Out of strangeness, there had come into being something familiar; a shape in chaos.” An African priest is saying the Latin Mass.

Despite centuries of reversal and tumult, something “new and yet ageless” remained. When the Latin Mass was suppressed at the end of Waugh’s life, his youthful vision of it being said forever looked like folly. If it seems likelier today, it is due in part to people like Bishop Ochiagha and the worshipers here who have preserved an inheritance rejected by others. Against all odds, the body of Christ remains “a shape in chaos,” marked but unbroken by the passing of time.