Scottish Catholic Observer

Scotland was honoured last weekend as Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews & Edinburgh received an Apostolic letter marking the close of the Jubilee Year of Mercy from Pope Francis in person on behalf of the bishops of the world.

The apostolic letter extends special Year of Mercy provisions, including forgiveness for abortion.

“It was a great surprise but it was also a great honour—an honour for our diocese, for our people and for Scotland too,” Archbishop Cushley said following the ceremony in St Peter’s Square, Rome, on Sunday November 20. “A lovely blessing, a very moving, emotional and a very happy occasion to be able to do that, to receive this letter from the hands of the Holy Father himself.”

The presentation of the Apostolic letter by Pope Francis took place at the conclusion of Holy Mass upon the Solemnity of Christ the King. While Archbishop Luis Tagle of Manila was asked to represent the Sacred College of Cardinals, Archbishop Cushley was asked to represent the bishops of the Universal Church. The Archbishop previously worked for Pope Francis as head of the English Language Section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.

“He gave me a nice smile and he shook my hand and he said ‘I think you’ve lost a wee bit of weight,’ and I had to admit to losing a couple of kilos,” Archbishop Cushley said of Sunday’s brief papal conversation. “It was very happy and friendly, as always.”

Great gift

The Pope’s Apostolic letter is titled Misericordia et Misera.

“I think it [the Year of Mercy] has put something at the heart of our Christian Faith, and the practice of it back at the centre of our lives— mercy itself,” Archbishop Cushley added.

“It’s been a great gift to us. I think it’s something that has come from the Holy Father’s own spirituality, his own spiritual journey and it has restored something that is there. It’s been part of the landscape and now we see it much more profoundly; we see it in greater relief as a result of the Year of Mercy.”

In his letter, Pope Francis said ‘none of us have the right to make forgiveness conditional,’ and said he was formally giving all priests permanent permission to grant absolution to those who confess to having procured an abortion. While many bishops around the world routinely grant that faculty to all their priests, Pope Francis had made it universal during the Holy Year.

According to Canon Law, procuring an abortion brings automatic excommunication to those who know of the penalty, but procure the abortion anyway. Without formal permission, priests had been required to refer the case to their bishops before the excommunication could be lifted and sacramental absolution could be granted to a woman who had an abortion or those directly involved in the procedure.

“I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life,” the Pope wrote. “In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father.”

Canon law

Speaking to reporters during a Vatican news conference November 21, Archbishop Rino Fisichella said procuring an abortion still results in automatic excommunication the very moment the procedure is carried out.

Sacramental absolution, therefore, is not just forgiving the sin of abortion, but also means ‘the excommunication is removed,’ he said.

Now that all priests have been given the faculty to lift the excommunication and grant absolution, the Code of Canon Law will have to be updated, said the archbishop, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, the office that organised events for the Year of Mercy.

SSPX

The Pope also formally extended the provision he made during the Year of Mercy of recognising as valid the Sacramental absolution received by ‘those faithful who, for various reasons, attend churches officiated by the priests of the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X,’ the traditionalist society founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Although the Vatican and the society continue talks aimed at formally restoring the society’s full communion with the Church, Pope Francis said he was extending the pastoral provision ‘lest anyone ever be deprived of the Sacramental sign of reconciliation through the Church’s pardon.’

The Holy Father said that through these and other changes he wishes to institute ‘a culture of mercy’—as St John Paul II called for ‘a culture of life’—which is ‘based on the rediscovery of encounter with others, a culture in which no one looks at another with indifference or turns away from the suffering of our brothers and sisters.’

“The works of mercy are ‘handcrafted,’ in the sense that none of them is alike,” he added.

He concludes with a concrete suggestion that the ‘entire Church might celebrate, on the Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, the World Day of the Poor.’

The title of the document is taken from a sermon by St Augustine about Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery. After those who wanted to stone her slinked away, only Jesus and the woman—mercy and misery—remained.

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—This story ran in full in the November 25 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.