World churches heed Pope’s call to open doors for ‘year of mercy’
CATHEDRALS around the world flung open their Holy Doors yesterday on the orders of Pope Francis, as the pontiff celebrated the first Sunday of his Jubilee of Mercy by opening one himself at Rome’s Basilica of St John Lateran.
“We have opened the Holy Door, here and in all the cathedrals of the world,” Pope Francis said, after pushing open the bronze doors and pausing to pray silently on their threshold.
He called the symbolic gesture “an invitation to joy”.
“It begins a time of the great forgiveness. It is the Jubilee of Mercy ... God does not love rigidity. He is tender.” By ordering Holy Doors opened in Catholic parishes worldwide, Pope Francis broke with a centuries-long tradition in which the faithful were expected to make the pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee, a year set aside for pardons.
Usually held every 25 or 50 years, this Jubilee, the Holy Year of Mercy, is an extraordinary, and unscheduled one, inaugurated by Pope Francis on Dec 8 with the opening of the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica.
According to the Vatican, gates of mercy were to open in far-flung locations across 40 countries: in the cathedral of Rangoon in Burma, in a sanctuary on the tundra of Alaska, in a remote mountain village in northern Iraq, and even in conflict-torn Libya and Syria.
Cathedrals around Britain also opened Holy Doors over the weekend, including Westminster Cathedral, Clifton Cathedral in Bristol, Arundel Cathedral in West Sussex, and Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire. A list of Holy Door locations has been published by the Vatican.
The tradition of opening a Holy Door during a jubilee to symbolically open the way to salvation and mercy dates back to the 15th century, when Pope Martin V opened the same door that Pope Francis did yesterday at the papal basilica of St John Lateran.
Considered the oldest church in the West, it is just one of five papal basilicas and is known as the “mother of all churches” among Catholics.
The door itself has been hidden behind a brick wall since the last regular Jubilee year, in 2000.
When the wall was knocked down in late November in preparation for Sunday’s opening, workers found a zinc box containing the documents certifying the door’s closure at the end of the 2000 Jubilee, as well as 41 medals minted with the emblem of Pope John Paul II.
By contrast, the first door to be opened in preparation for the Holy Year celebrations called by reform- minded Pope Francis was the simple wooden door to the cathedral in Bangui, in the war-ravaged Central African Republic, which the pontiff visited in late November.
But despite living in a period of “great abuse and violence, especially by men of power”, Pope Francis urged those gathered to celebrate Mass yesterday to not let sadness prevail.
“We cannot let ourselves be taken in by fatigue; sadness in any form is not allowed, even though we have reason to be with the many concerns and the many forms of violence which hurt humanity,” the Pope said.