Jubilee Year Plenary Indulgence

What is a plenary indulgence? Our church teaches that God is all mercy. Yet, our sins have the potential to imperil our hope for a happy life in this world and our eternal life in the next. The ordinary means of being healed for eternal life is the Sacrament of Penance, when we confess our sins and receive absolution. Yet, the effects of our sin in this life remain, what our faith calls the “temporal effects” of our sin. The remedy for this harm in this world is prayer and penance.  Drawing from the treasury of holiness in the Communion of Saints, the Church recommends a means of healing for the “temporal effects” of our sins, which it calls an “indulgence.” Because of the special nature of this Jubilee Year of Hope, our Holy Father has designated a “plenary indulgence” for this temporal healing, through which the faithful, by completion of recommended spiritual acts, obtain the mercy of healing of the temporal effects of all their sins.  The same recommended actions can be applied to a deceased person, but not to another living person. (Each person can act for him or herself!) While plenary indulgences are often associated with a pilgrimage to a designated holy site in Rome, by my authority, I am permitted to designate a site in our diocese for such a pilgrimage.

 Therefore, I decree, in communion with the directives of our Holy Father Pope Francis, that, besides the holy sites in Rome, the faithful of our Diocese of Rapid City may obtain a Jubilee Year Plenary Indulgence for themselves or a deceased person through a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Rapid City during the Jubilee Year, beginning December 29, 2024, and ending December 28, 2025. Pope Francis further specifies, that upon the occasion of the pilgrimage to the holy site, those seeking the Jubilee plenary indulgence ought to receive sacramental absolution through confession, and “for a suitable period of time, engage in Eucharistic adoration and meditation, concluding with the Our Father, the Profession of Faith in any legitimate form, and … [offer prayers] to Mary, the Mother of God, so that in this Holy Year everyone ‘will come to know the closeness of Mary, the most affectionate of mothers, who never abandons her children’.” 

The Jubilee Year of Hope is now upon us. Rise…let us be on our way … our pilgrim way to mercy and hope. Surgite eamus!

+Most Rev. Scott E. Bullock