The Deacon's Bench
The Pope’s “Jubilee of Mercy” year, which ends this month, has brought more than 20 million pilgrims to Rome, the Vatican said Thursday.
Monsignor Rino Fisichella, head of the Vatican’s evangelisation efforts, estimated that over 20.4 million participants had travelled to take part in the jubilee year events.
Overall a billion people may have participated in churches around the world, Bishop Fisichella told members of the foreign press association.
Fisichella said that the theme of mercy had been neglected by theologians but was now back at the centre of Christian thinking.
The Papal holy year, the first since 2000-2001, has seen many events including the canonisation of Mother Teresa.
In contrast, some figures from the 2000 Jubilee:
The year 2000 was marked by the huge number of pilgrims to Rome, the greatest in the city´s entire history.
However, the various organizations in charge of the reckoning are not in agreement on the exact numbers. Whereas the Roman Jubilee Agency states that the total number of pilgrims to the Holy City in 2000 was 24.5 million, the Italian Statistical Center (CENSIS) affirms there were 32 million.
On December 30, the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household published the total number of pilgrims who attended events presided over by John Paul II last year, establishing the figure at 8,515,088.
About 4,652,500 people participated in individual ceremonies or special Jubilees presided over by the Pontiff, and close to 1,463,500 in the general audiences that were held throughout the year. 1,342,088 attended special audiences, and 1,057,000 participated in Sunday and Feastday noon meetings with the Pope to pray the Marian “Angelus.”
In an effort to evaluate the Jubilee, on December 27 Joaquin Navarro-Valls, Vatican spokesman, said on Vatican Radio that “the real problem is not to examine the meaning of the extremely large number of pilgrims who came to Rome, but to reflect on the reason why these people came to Rome.”
I suspect a number of factors may have discouraged pilgrims from visiting Rome this year—including the increased risk of terrorism and heightened security (which has depressed tourism throughout Europe) and the fact that many dioceses around the world had multiple “Holy Doors” of their own for personal pilgrimage and devotion.
Photo: Deacon Greg Kandra
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