Year Of Mercy

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Holy Year of Mercy will be an opportunity to encourage Christians to meet people's "real needs" with concrete assistance, to experience a "true pilgrimage" on foot, and to send "missionaries of mercy" throughout the world to forgive even the most serious of sins, said Archbishop Rino Fisichella.

The yearlong extraordinary jubilee also will include several individual jubilee days, such as for the Roman Curia, catechists, teenagers and prisoners, said the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, the office organizing events for the Holy Year of Mercy, which will be celebrated from Dec. 8, 2015, until Nov. 20, 2016.

The motto, "Merciful Like the Father," he said, "serves as an invitation to follow the merciful example of the Father who asks us not to judge or condemn but to forgive and to give love and forgiveness without measure."

Pope Francis announced in March his intention to proclaim a holy year as a way for the church to "make more evident its mission to be a witness of mercy."

One way the pope wants to show "the church's maternal solicitude" is to send out "missionaries of mercy" – that is, specially selected priests who have been granted "the authority to pardon even those sins reserved to the Holy See," the pope wrote in "Misericordiae Vultus," ("The Face of Mercy"), the document officially proclaiming the Holy Year.

Archbishop Fisichella said the priests will be chosen on the basis of their ability to preach well, especially on the theme of mercy, and be "good confessors," meaning they are able to express God's love and do not make the confessional, as Pope Francis says, like "a torture chamber."

The priests will also have to "be patient" and have "an understanding of human fragility," the archbishop said.

Bishops can recommend (to the council) priests from their own dioceses to serve as missionaries of mercy, he said, and priests themselves can submit their requests to serve, he said.

When a priest volunteers, however, the council will confer with his bishop to make sure he would be "suitable for this ministry" and has the bishop's approval to serve temporarily as a missionary of mercy, he said.

More than a dozen individual jubilee celebrations will be scheduled in 2016, such as a jubilee for consecrated men and women Feb. 2 to close the Year of Consecrated Life; a jubilee for the Roman Curia Feb. 22; a jubilee for those devoted to the spirituality of Divine Mercy on Divine Mercy Sunday April 3; and separate jubilees for teenagers; for deacons; priests; the sick and disabled; and catechists.

A jubilee for "workers and volunteers of mercy" will be celebrated on Blessed Mother Teresa’s feast day Sept. 5 and a jubilee for prisoners will be celebrated Nov. 6.

The Jubilee of Mercy has an official website in seven languages at www.im.va; a Twitter handle @Jubilee_va; a Facebook page; and accounts on Instagram, Flickr and Google .