VATICAN CORNER
Pope Francis formally ended the Jubilee Year of Mercy by saying a prayer thanking God for the gift of the Jubilee year and then pulling the tall gilded Holy Doors to the Basilica closed. Workers immediately removed the door handles and then later bricked shut the doorway. It will be opened again for the next Jubilee year which is likely to be 2025. The door closing was at the start of Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday November 20, 2016. The Mass celebrating the Feast of Christ the King had an estimated 70,000 people attending as well as 17 new cardinals that Pope Francis gave to the Church in a ceremony the day before. In his homily he said that even if the Holy Door is closed, “the true door of mercy, which is the heart of Christ, always remains open wide for us.” He urged all to stay open to reconciliation. He said “Let us ask for the grace of never closing the doors of reconciliation and pardon, but rather of knowing how to go beyond evil and differences, opening every possible pathway of hope.” For the past year it is estimated that more than 20 million people participated in the Jubilee Year of Mercy at the Vatican, and a billion people may have participated in churches worldwide. The Vatican had special audiences with the Pope one Saturday each month in St. Peter’s Square and many larger events, including a 24-hour long period of Eucharistic adoration and a prayer vigil and jubilees held (among others) for the sick and disabled, catechists, teenagers, deacons, priests, religious volunteers, pilgrims worker, missionaries, prisoners and most recently, the poor and homeless. Pope Francis also spent one Friday a month making private visits to groups he found in special need of being shown God’s mercy, including refugees, victims of sex trafficking, those in hospitals and retirement homes, and children in difficult situations. Some critics consider this Jubilee to be a flop because the crowds coming to Rome fell short of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 under St. Pope John Paul II. But Pope Francis never conceived this jubilee primarily as an effort to draw people to Rome. Instead he wanted it to be a decentralized and local affair, with holy doors opened in cathedrals, sanctuaries, and shrines, as well as charitable centers, all around the world. All told the Vatican estimates that more than 12,000 holy doors were opened during the jubilee year worldwide. So the real test of the success of the Jubilee of Mercy should be whether the Church and the world are more merciful or at least leaning more towards mercy than before. At first glance, the signs are not terribly encouraging. Conflict in Syria continues, Colombians voted down a civil war ending peace deal, the British voted to leave the European Union. The United State had one of the most divisive political seasons in its history. Even the Catholic Church is fighting over matters such as Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Probably the right way to see if the Jubilee of Mercy is successful is to see what happens going forward, if people actually follow the Pope’s core message.
Sources: news.va,ncronline.org,cruxnow.com,washingtontimes.com, catholicnews.com, foxnews.com