Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tunis to close down all the Catholic churches in the country, forced the Holy See to accept an agreement of the type known as a modus vivendi, a term that literally means "a way of living". This particular agreement was unofficially described as instead a "modus non moriendi" ("a way of not dying"). By it, all but 5 of the country's more than 70 churches were handed over to the state, including what had been the cathedral of the archdiocese, while the state, for its part, promised that the buildings would be put only to use of public interest consonant with
Ite, missa est the assembly] is dismissed". However, according to Fortescue (1910), the word "missa" as used in this phrase is not the feminine participle (Classical Latin "missa"), but rather a Late Latin form of what would be "missio" in classical Latin, meaning "dismissal", for a translation of "Go, the dismissal is made". Chupungco (1999) noted that "some persons have attempted" to "sublimate" the straightforward meaning of the phrase into an interpretation of "missio" "dismissal" as "mission" (as in, "go and be a missionary"), but judges this interpretation as "without foundation". The connection between the meaning "dismissal" and the 'deeper' meaning of "mission"