The Jubilee Year of Hope, as designated by the late Pope Francis, is drawing to a close, but there is still plenty of opportunity to make a pilgrimage to a designated site and receive a Jubilee plenary indulgence for themselves or for someone else who has passed.
The Jubilee Year opened on Christmas Eve 2024 and will end 6 January 2026 and is a celebration of hope in a time where the world is marred by COVID-19, wars, unrest, and other hardship.
In Sydney, Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP has declared 12 parishes across the city to be Places of Pilgrimage until 2028, allowing Catholics to get an experience of the jubilee who are unable to travel to Rome.
Speaking to The Catholic Weekly, earlier in the year, Gymea parish priest Fr Greg Morgan said a plenary indulgence is the “removal of any temporal punishment for sin.”
“In principle, we sin, we go to reconciliation, and our sins are forgiven but we still have to make restitution, we still have to make up for those things that we have done wrong,” he said.
“The grace of a plenary indulgence is it even takes away what justice we would expect to do in return for that gift of mercy.”
Fr Morgan said an “essential aspect” of a plenary indulgence is how it enriches the person who is receiving it and should not be burdensome in any way.
“Just because there’s human error and there’s human mistakes doesn’t discount the fact that these things are of God and can actually be used for the spiritual benefit of his people,” he said.
Fr Morgan said indulgences were not a “get out of jail free card” as there must be contrition when seeking one.
“This is why the heart is so important,” he said.
“We have to seek at a most interior level to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.”
Designated jubilee churches in Sydney also have amended timetables, including dedicated and additional times for adoration, confession, and prayer.
Sydney’s Places of Pilgrimage 2025
- St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
- St Anne’s Church, Bondi Beach
- Holy Spirit Church, Carnes Hill
- St Patrick’s Church, Church Hill
- St Brigid’s Church, Coogee
- St Catherine Laboré, Gymea
- All Saints Catholic Church, Liverpool
- St Joachim’s Church, Lidcombe
- St Brigid’s Church, Marrickville
- The Shrine of St Mary of the Cross, North Sydney
- Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, Randwick
- The Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Waterloo
