Catholics can receive special indulgences during eucharistic year

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — During the Year of the Eucharist, which runs through October, Catholics can receive special indulgences for eucharistic adoration and prayer before the Eucharist.

Pope John Paul authorized the indulgences in order to encourage in the faithful "a deeper knowledge of and a more intense love" for the Eucharist, said U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary.

The Vatican published the cardinal’s statement announcing the indulgences and outlining the requirements for receiving them Jan. 14.

An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment due for sins committed.

Cardinal Stafford said the special eucharistic year indulgences include the normal requirements set by the church for all plenary indulgences: that within a reasonably short period of time, the person goes to confession, receives the Eucharist and prays for the intentions of the pope, all in a spirit of total detachment from the attraction of sin.

Special plenary indulgences, he said, would be given to those who fulfill the normal requirements in conjunction with participating "with attention and piety in a sacred function or a pious exercise carried out in honor of the Blessed Sacrament, either solemnly exposed or preserved in the tabernacle."

In addition, he said, those who recite the vespers and compline prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours in a church or chapel where the Eucharist is present in the tabernacle will receive a plenary indulgence.

Cardinal Stafford said that Catholics who because of illness or other serious reason cannot visit a church or chapel could still earn the indulgence if they make the visit "with the desire of their hearts, in a spirit of faith in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the sacrament of the altar."

Those who cannot go to church, he said, should recite the Lord’s Prayer, the creed and a short prayer about the gift of the Eucharist.

The cardinal said Catholics who are physically unable to do even that could receive the indulgence by offering their illness and difficulties up to the Lord and uniting their prayers with the prayer of someone fulfilling the requirements.