The special indulgence from the Vatican marks the Ordinariate’s jubilee year celebrating 10 years of its founding by Benedict XVI and extends to pilgrims to the Walsingham shrine in Houston.

VATICAN CITY – Catholics throughout the U.S. will have an opportunity to gain a special plenary indulgence this Sunday, Nov. 3, by joining in an Ordinariate parish or parish community’s Divine Worship Mass and singing the Solemn Te Deum.

The plenary indulgence authorized by Pope Francis marks the 10th anniversary of Anglicanorum Coetibus, Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution creating three new personal Ordinariates: Catholic dioceses with Anglican traditions located in North America, the United Kingdom, and Oceania and the Pacific Rim.

The Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, which is the Ordinariate for North America, is celebrating a jubilee year from Nov. 3, 2019, to Sept. 27, 2020, when the Ordinariate observes the patronal Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham.

The plenary indulgence will also be granted also to Catholics who make a pilgrimage to the Our Lady of Walsingham Cathedral and Shrine in Houston, Texas.

According to the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Major Penitentiary of the Holy Roman Church, confirmed the Pope’s grant of the plenary indulgence “on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the promulgation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “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.”

“An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin.” Indulgences may be applied to the living or the dead. (CCC 1471)

Both Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have been highly supportive of the Ordinariate and the restoration of the Anglican tradition to full Catholic life. Pope Francis in 2015 approved a new Roman missal for the Ordinariate based entirely on the English liturgical tradition, called Divine Worship, making it the third Roman missal in use next to the Roman missals for the ordinary and extraordinary forms. Pope Francis also named the Ordinariate’s first bishop, Bishop Steven Lopes, an American who had worked closely on setting up the ordinariate and Divine Worship in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and twice expanded the Ordinariate’s canonical membership rules and missionary mandate.

The Ordinariate’s statement on the jubilee year plenary indulgence continues:

The Indulgence for a visit to the Shrine during the Jubilee year may be obtained daily for one’s self, or, as an act of supreme charity, the person making the pious visit may receive the Indulgence on behalf of a member of Christ’s faithful who has died.

The conditions for obtaining the Plenary Indulgence, both on Nov. 3 or by making a pious visit to the Cathedral and Shrine during the Jubilee year, indicate that the faithful Christian:

— have the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, even venial sin;

— have sacramentally confessed his/her sins within 20 days of receiving the Indulgence;

— receive the Holy Eucharist, preferably on the day receiving the Indulgence;

— pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff.

All Catholics interested in obtaining this plenary indulgence Nov. 3 can find the nearest Ordinariate parish community here.

For more information about the Ordinariate read the Register’s coverage: