Jubilee Year Plenary Indulgence

During the Jubilee of Hope, the Church offers opportunities to obtain a plenary indulgence. The Catechism tells us “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints."

Through obtaining an indulgence, grace is bestowed upon us in satisfaction for sin or can be offered for the souls in purgatory. A plenary indulgence removes all the temporal punishment due to sin.

An indulgence is obtained when in the proper disposition, and meeting the prescribed conditions, a member of the faithful carries out a prescribed work.

The ordinary prerequisites to receiving an indulgence still apply during the Jubilee year:

  1. Be in a state of grace.
  2. Have the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, even venial sin.
  3. Sacramentally confess your sins within 20 days before or after.
  4. Receive the Holy Eucharist within 20 days before or after.
  5. Pray for the intentions of the Holy Father. An Our Father and Hail Mary are suggested.

The Decree granting the Indulgence for the Jubilee of Hope tells us that those who have fulfilled the requirements above will be able to obtain a plenary indulgence in one of the following ways that are special to the Jubilee of Hope:

  1. Visit a locally designated Jubilee Pilgrimage Site. Information about our three Archdiocesan pilgrimage sites can be found below. While you are visiting the pilgrimage site, you must devoutly participate in one of the following:
    1. Mass
    2. a celebration of the Word of God
    3. the Liturgy of the Hours prayed in community
    4. the Way of the Cross
    5. the Rosary
    6. Eucharistic Adoration concluded with the Our Father, a Profession of Faith and a Marian prayer, like the Hail Mary or Hail Holy Queen.
  2. Participate in missions, spiritual exercises or formation activities on the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
  3. Visit someone who is in need: the sick, prisoners, the lonely or the elderly, “in a sense making a pilgrimage to Christ present in them.”
  4. Engage in an initiative that puts into practice the spirit of penance that is the soul of the jubilee:
    1. Abstain on Friday to rediscover its penitential nature. You can abstain from some futile distraction, superfluous consumption or meat as according to the general norms of the Church.
    2. Donate to the poor.
    3. Support work in defense and protection of human life in all its phases.
    4. Support the quality of life of those in need in some tangible way.
    5. Volunteer in service to your community.

Jubilee Pilgrimage Sites in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis

SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral, 1347 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis.

The Shrine of St. Mother Theodore Guérin and the Church of the Immaculate Conception, 1 Sisters of Providence Road, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, St. Mary of the Woods.

Saint Meinrad Archabbey Church, 200 Hill Dr., St. Meinrad.

Local site Links: