Pope Francis grants indulgence for Holy Name Year

From Catholic Ireland.net:

A special year long religious celebration launched this month by Poor Clare nuns and Franciscans friars in Ireland has received a major boost with the news that Pope Francis has bestowed his seal of approval on the event.

Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, who holds the Church’s title of the Cardinal Penitentiary, has informed the Irish friars and the Galway city-based nuns that the Pope has decreed that a plenary indulgence will be granted to the Irish faithful who participate in devotions honouring the Holy Name of Jesus over the course of 2014.

Pope Francis’s interest in the Irish year of devotion is believed to be linked to his special affinity with the Franciscan charism and his own devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. On election last March, he chose to include the monogram IHS in his papal crest.

In addition to the granting of a plenary indulgence, the Pope has also decreed that the celebrations will have the status of a jubilee year.

Responding to the news, the mother abbess of the Poor Clares in Galway, an enclosed community, said they were “thrilled”.

Sr Colette told CatholicIreland.net that the jubilee was even bigger than the indulgence as it was “a sign of God’s lavish mercy. It is like the celebration of a wedding anniversary.”

“We never dreamed that this centenary would get such recognition from Pope Francis. We had applied for the granting of a special indulgence but the granting of Jubilee Year status is far beyond what we expected,” she added.

The Roman office responsible for granting indulgences, stated that, Pope Francis … “most willingly expressing his paternal benevolence, grants a Jubilee Year with the attached Plenary Indulgence”.
 

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Our previous post about the Year of the Holy Name of Jesus.