POPE BENEDICT has been asked to grant special indulgences - remittances of punishment for sins already forgiven - to thousands of young Catholics expected to attend World Youth Day in Sydney. When the event was held in Cologne in 2005, young Catholics who took part in confession and communion during the jubilee of devotion received full, or plenary, indulgences.
The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has asked that the Pope grant an indulgence for pilgrims who visit St Mary's Cathedral and pray the prayer of consecration to Our Lady of the Southern Cross, the patroness of Australia and of World Youth Day.
The request is before Cardinal James Stafford, of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a ministry of the Vatican. If the request were granted, it would enhance the position of the cathedral as a place of pilgrimage during the six-day youth gathering.
Monsignor Marc Caron, responsible for the celebration of the sacraments of reconciliation in World Youth Day's main venues, said: "It draws people's attention to the pilgrimage to the cathedral and encourages them to be more intentional, to say that they are not coming as a tourist but they are coming to the building for the purpose of prayer."
The World Youth Day website states indulgences are "particular expressions of the mercy of God".
Catholic teaching holds that sins require purification in this life or the next. Purification in this life takes place through prayer, acts of charity and the patient bearing of trials and sufferings - or via dispensation of indulgences.
The belief is that indulgences draw on the storehouse of merit acquired by Jesus' sacrifice. An indulgence may be used either for yourself or for souls who have died and gone to purgatory, a state of purification before heaven.
Indulgences are not magical, the Vatican says, and like all graces require the proper attitude by those receiving them.
"Sin has consequences, beyond the action itself, on other people and society," Monsignor Caron said. An example, he said, is of parents who say to a child, "Don't play baseball in the front yard."
"Sure enough, the child does, the ball goes through the window and breaks it. The child says sorry, but they still have broken the window, so who is going to pay for the broken window? There has to be expressions of good that help repair the damage that sin causes."
The selling of indulgences in the Middle Ages helped trigger the Reformation. John Paul II revived the practice at World Youth Day 2000.
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