THE HOLY YEAR

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 20, 24 July 1933, Page 3

THE HOLY YEAR

ITS MEANING IN ROME

THE HOMAGE OF THE PILGRIMS

SPLEISDID CEEEMONIES

In the Middle Ages the pilgrims who travelled to Home to benefit by the special Holy Year indulgences conceded by the Popes undertook a difficult journey. Means of transportation were almost entirely lacking and all but the wealthy had to come the whole distance on foot. The roads were dangerous and infested with robbers. " The miserable inns where shelter could be obtained for the night were few and far between. It was often difficult to get food, writes Arnaldo Cortesi in the 'fNew York Times.''

No wonder, then, when, footsore and weary, the travellers breasted the last heights and saw the dome of St. Peter's rising in the distance, overtopping even tho famous seven hills of Borne, they fell to their knees in an ecstasy of religious fervour. No wonder they tarried long in Borne, loath to face the perils and discomforts of, the homeward journey. ,

The railroad and the motor-car have rendered tho lot of the pilgrim enormously easier, without destroying that atmosphere of romance which throughout the centuries has attached to the Holy Year celebrations. InEome itself an elaborate organisation exists to cave for the visitors who eoine by the hundreds of thousands, some from tho most distant parts of the world, to kneel for a few moments before thD tomb of St. Peter. The large majority are poor people, who sacrifice hard-won savings for spiritual benefits. They come from Japan and Australasia, from South Africa and Patagonia, from Labrador and Lapland, from every region, to which Catholic missionaries have penetrated.

SPLENDOUR AND RITUAL.

All the ceremonies connected with the Holy Year are distinguished by that mixture of regaJ splendour and mystic ritual for which the Vatican is famous. Looked at purely as spectacles, they are worth coming far to gee. Indeed, many people who are not Catholics make the journey purposely to feast their eyes on the magnificent scenes which are to be found in the church of the great dome, and, to a lesser degree, in the other basilicas and churches. Those ceremonies in which the Pope takes part are, of course, particularly sumptuous. St. Peter's, with its mighty marble pilla.rs, its mysterious half-light, its ■myriads of candles, its ■ artistic treasures, forms a fitting background for the Pontiff, in his gorgeous raiment, carried aloft in the sedia gestatoria, surrounded by his. brilliant court, whose motley uniforms blaze with colour.

And every act, every gesture, every detail, is laden with deep symbolic moaning for the Catholic.

Rome shows off to its best advantage during the course of a Holy Year. The Eternal City is then seen in its true role of capital and centre of Catholicism. The streets are thronged with priests and nuns, with monks, and' missionaries whose unkempt beards and worn tunics proclaim their recent arrival from far-distant lands.

ISands of pilgrims, usually clothed in the characteristic costumes of their countries, pause to wonder before the monuments of their faith and the remains of the glory that was Rome. The bells of the churches poal the summons to services, held in almost unbroken succession. Everywhere there are crowds, everywhere there is noise;, a feeling of repressed excitement seems to pervade the air.

For the..Pope, Holy Year represents an enormous increase in the burdens of an already overburdened life. In certain hoiirs of the day the courtyards, the passages, the halls of tho Vatican are filled with huge and diversified crowds, awaiting audience by tho Pope. Three, four, five times each day he receives hundreds, perhaps thousands of pilgrims, giving each his> hand to kiss. At the conclusion of each audience he usually delivers an address. At least once a week, and sometimes more often, he must take part in religious ceremonies, sometimes lasting several hours, during which he must wear his heavy robes in an atmosphere made oppressive by people crowding around him on all sides. And the ordinary business of the Vatican must go on also.

REMARKABLE STRENGTH.

In the Holy Year of 1925 it was said that Pius XI had displayed remarkable stamina under the strain placed upon him by twelve months of unusual and extremely tiring activity. Today he is eight years older, ancl it might have been thought that another jubilee- year might prove too much for a man of 76 years. Pius" XI, however, appears equally fresh, ready, and vigorous. The proclamation of this jubilee year,"not in tho natural oi'der of the celebrations of the Church, was entirely duo to the Pope's own initiative.

The Holy Yesb inaugurated recently is tho twenty-fourth by official computation ■in tho annals of the Catholic Church. According to the original constitution of Pope Boniface VIII, only seven universal jubilees should have been celebrated to the present day. . Ho decreed, in fact, that these extraordinary festivals of the Catholic Church should take place every hundred years, beginning from the year 1300. Soon, howver, the intervals appeared to bo too long, and in 1350 Pope Clement VI reduced the period to fifty years. The frequency of the Holy Years was further increased by Pope Nicholas V, who in the fifteenth century decided that one should be held every twentyfive years. The celebration has twice been omitted owing to abnormal conditions. In 1800 the Roman Curia had been obliged to leave Homo as a consequence of the unrest caused by tho French Revolution; and in 1850 Piu's IX, who had also found it necessary to leave his capital, could not return until April 12—too late, since the jubilee always begins on Christmas Eve of the preceding year.

"THE ROMAN QUESTION."

In the official list of the twenty-three Holy Years celebrated up to tho prosent, 1875 has been included though it was accompanied by no solemnities of an external nature, because Rome hail just been taken from tho Holy See and proclaimed capital of Italy. Thus the "Roman Question" —wTiich was to bo settled by tho Lateran agreements of February 11, 1929—was a burning issue. Two extraordinary jubilees have fallen outside tho normal sequence established by the Popes. These two were held by Pope Urban VI in 1389 and by Pope Martin V in 1423. Both dates saw exceptional conditions in tho history of the church. Urban VI was the Pope under whom occurred that rebellion of tho Cardinals which led to tho schism of the West, when the church was divided first into two and then into three "obediences," which recognised as their respective heads the Pontiffs elected by various factions of Cardinals, one in Home, another in Avignon, and a third in Pisa.

As soon as the schism, occurred, Urban VI, the Eoman Pope, in order solemnly to affirm that the Eternal City still was the only centre of the Catholic religion, and the seat of the true Vicar of Christ, proclaimed a sacred and universal jubilee year in 1389, despite the

fact that the normal period of fifty years since the previous Holy Year had not yet elapsed. .Somewhat similar were the reasons which prompted Martin V, belonging to tho princely Boman family of Coloima, to proclaim, tho jubilee year of 1423. He had been elected Pontiff by tho Council of Constance, which had reestablished the visible unity of the Catholic Church, and his first thought, as ho journeyed towards Borne to restore the residence of the Popes in the Eternal City, was to call the faithful of all the world together to take part in the solemn rites of a jubilee around the tomb of the Apostles.

THE THIRD.

To these .two extraordinary jubilee years is now added el third. It marks tho nineteenth centenary of the Passion, the Death, and the Besurrection. It is not mathematically certain that the centenary falls in- 1933, but this year appears to be tho most probable. Since there is a slight possibility that 1934 is the year, Pius XI decided that tho jubilee should begin in April of 1933 and run until April of 1934. The outstanding ceremony of the Holy Year is the opening of the holy doors in St. Peter's and in the other three major basilicas of Borne —St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiorc, and St. Paul Outside the Walls. It was in 1500 that Pope Alexander VI, exactly two centuries after the first jubilee, introduced the rite, while at the same time meeting the material necessity of? rendering access to the basilicas as easy, as possible to the vast number of pilgrims who wished to cross their thresholds. ■ Tho holy doors, opened only during jubilee years, becamo a physical symbol of the exceptional nature of the period in which the whole of Christianity is convoked to Borne. ■ The opening ana closing ,of the holy door in tho basilica of St. Peter is byno means the only ceremony of Holy Year in which the Pope personally takes part. Beatifications and canonisations are celebrated- in the majesty of the Vatican basilica. In 1925, the last Holy Year, an unusually large number of such ceremonies took place. Although Leo XIII in 1900 had canonised only two saints, Pius XI, twenty-five years later, celebrated no less than six canonisations, including that of Saint Theresa of tho Infant Jesus, and nine beatifications.

A series of boatificatidns and canonisations has been planned for the present Holy Year and will be held in two periods. Five beatifications will be held in the first, and several beatifications and canonisations, the exact number of which is not yet certain, will be held in the spring of 1934.