Pope's Agenda: the Jubilee Year of Mercy ends

As Year of Mercy ends, Holy Doors close around the world

A holy door closes at Saint Paul Outside the Walls church in Rome. Nov. 13, 2016. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

By Hannah Brockhaus


Vatican City, Nov 13, 2016 / 01:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As Holy Doors close in churches and basilicas around the world, including in Rome, it is estimated that over 20 million people participated in the Church’s Jubilee Year of Mercy at the Vatican – and a billion people may have participated in churches worldwide.

According to Msgr. Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, it is estimated that 20.4 million people attended Year of Mercy events at the Vatican over the course of this year.

Archbishop Welby: ‘The Year of Mercy inspired all Christians’

by Staff Reporter

posted Tuesday, 15 Nov 2016

Cardinal Nichols and Archbishop Welby at Vespers (Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk)



The Archbishop of Canterbury joined Cardinal Vincent Nichols for the closing of the Door of Mercy at Westminster Cathedral

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the Year of Mercy has “caught the imagination” of all Christians in a homily at Westminster Cathedral for the closing of the Door of Mercy.

Archbishop Justin Welby joined Cardinal Vincent Nichols at Vespers on Sunday. It was the first time the Anglican leader had preached at the Cathedral. Also present were bishops from throughout England and Wales, members of the Chapter of Canons, and other ecumenical guests.

“The Year of Mercy has caught the imagination not only in the Catholic Church but in all churches,” Archbishop Welby said. He cited Blessed John XXIII’s “visionary address” to the Second Vatican Council, in which the pope spoke of the Holy Spirit helping the Church move away from “acting in severity against error and sin to acting in mercy”.

“This great Year of Mercy 50 years after the end of the Council has been received as water in the desert for global churches sadly lacking mercy, and must be offered as the way of living to a world which sees mercy only in terms of exchange, and never as the excess of abundant love,” the archbishop said.

Cardinal Nichols follows Archbishop Welby to the Holy Door (Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk)

Mercy was a “word of immense beauty”, he said, and “when we walk through the Door of Mercy and allow its meaning to enter our hearts we become different people . . . It works in us like a benevolent acid, dissolving the hardness of our hearts and the selfishness of our lives.”

The archbishop added: “The Door of Mercy calls us through, but like the doors into Narnia in the CS Lewis series, what we find on the other side of the door is another world, where the deep magic of the Kingdom of God is what prevails.”

Archbishop Welby also described the frequent absence of mercy in everyday life.

“Whether it is in elections and referendums, or in the international politics of refugees, of trade and commerce, and even in our own lives and expressions through social media, mercy is often absent,” he said.

The Door of Mercy at Westminster Cathedral was opened by Cardinal Nichols last December and has stayed open throughout the Year of Mercy, receiving pilgrims from around the country.

The Jubilee Year will conclude on Sunday when Pope Francis will close the Holy Door at St Peter’s Basilica.

Meanwhile, in a separate address to head teachers last week, Archbishop Welby said Government officials knew so little about religion that
conservative Evangelicals would be counted as extremists by the officials’ own definition.

Cardinal Nichols and Archbishop Welby pray at the Holy Door (Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk)

The Government, he said, could see no difference between Muslim extremists and traditionalist Christians, so both groups were dismissed as “a bit bonkers”. He made the remarks to headteachers of Church of England schools in the Anglican Diocese of Bath and Wells.

The Telegraph quoted Archbishop Welby as saying: “Our Government generally is desperately trying to catch up, to understand a world in which they have no grip on what it is to be religious at all; where religious illiteracy is prevalent and extremely destructive of understanding and where they can’t really see the difference between an extremist Muslim group like the Muslim Brotherhood and a sort of conservative Evangelical group in a Church of England church.”

He added: “It’s fine to reject many of the things done in the name of religion, but you still need to understand what it is that can so catch hold of someone that they think life itself is not worth living if that contradicts what they believe.”

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Year of Mercy is ideal time to expand priestly ’emergency service’, says Francis

Latest News

by Cindy Wooden 

posted Sunday, 16 Aug 2015

Pope sends message of support to Federation of Priestly Emergency Services

The Year of Mercy is the perfect time to increase the number of priests who take turns being on call all night for emergency spiritual care of the sick and dying, Pope Francis has said.

The Pope, as Jesuit Fr Jorge Mario Bergoglio, belonged to a special service, which is supported by the Federation of Priestly Emergency Services, an organisation of lay people in Argentina and Ecuador who drive and accompany priests on their night calls.

In a letter to the federation’s president, Manuel Martin Sjoberg, Pope Francis wrote: “The coming extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy is a good occasion for intensifying the collaboration between pastors and lay people in the mission of supporting with affection and tenderly assisting the sick and dying.”

The Pope also quoted from his document announcing the Year of Mercy, which begins on December 8, calling people to reach out and support those who are suffering “so they can feel the warmth of our presence, our friendship and our fraternity”.

In the Gospel Jesus tells people they will be judged by how they cared for the sick, he said. “In each of these ‘little ones’ Christ himself is present.”

According to Luis Badilla, who writes for the respected blog Il Sismografo, the federation is present in the city of Cordoba as well as in 17 dioceses of Argentina. It also has a presence in Ecuador.

The group was founded more than 60 years ago by Armando Cesar Sanchez, a lawyer in Cordoba, after knocking on the doors of a dozen churches one night seeking, without success, a priest to come to his dying son.

“Bars, pharmacies, barbershops and bookstores were all open, but no churches,” Mr Badilla wrote.

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