Indulge us, on indulgences

Everything you've wondered about indulgences and the Jubilee Year

When the Church’s Jubilee Year began Christmas Eve, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to receive the plenary indulgences made available through the year — with the pope himself, entering the holy doors at St. Peter’s Basilica, possibly obtaining the first one of the Jubilee.

Pope Francis enters the holy door at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Dec. 24, 2024. Credit: Vatican Media.

But the Jubilee Year has raised questions about what an indulgence is, and where the idea comes from.

Indulge us for a minute, and we’ll answer your questions.

So what is an indulgence?

The Church says an indulgence is a “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.”

What does that mean? Well, when we sin, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we become guilty — and for a grave sin, separated from communion with God.

We can be forgiven of that guilt in sacramental confession — and if we confess a grave sin, we’ll be restored to communion with God by absolution.

But sin has another effect — it degrades us, it disorders us, and it deepens our unhealthy attachments, which keep us from closeness with God. That attachment “must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory,” the Catechism says.

In other words, even after a person is forgiven for sin, damage is still done — to themselves and to others, and to the person’s relationship with God. And while God is the source of all holiness, the person themselves must still put in work to repair that damage.

The Church calls that “temporal punishment” — not because it is a “kind of vengeance inflicted by God,” but because it is the natural consequence of the sin itself.

The temporal punishment includes the demands of divine justice — the recompense of penance, which we owe to God for our sin.

Penance, charity, mortifications and works of mercy have the effects of restoring divine justice, and of purifying us — through the grace of the Cross, they bring us closer to God, reform us to holiness, and detach us from sin. That sanctification happens on earth, and after our earthly deaths, in purgatory.

Through the Cross, the requirements of divine justice — for all our sins — must also be resolved in this life or in purgatory.

An indulgence is one way of seeing the temporal punishment owed to us resolved.

The Church says that the “faithful Christian who is duly disposed” can see that temporal punishment remitted “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 obtained through the Church,” the Catechism explains, “who, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus, intervenes in favor of individual Christians and opens for them the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints to obtain from the Father of mercies the remission of the temporal punishments due for their sins.”

In short, an indulgence is a gift from God, by which we can undertake some spiritual, devotional, or liturgical action directed by the Church — with a contrite heart — and see our obligations of justice remitted.

The remission comes through the “treasury of merits” of the Church’s saints — the holy men and women who have preceded us. So in a certain way, an indulgence is a gift from them too, mediated by the Church.

There are, as it happens, two kinds of indulgence — the partial indulgence, which remits some temporal punishment, and the plenary indulgence, which remits all temporal punishment for sins committed.

This sounds a lot like working your own way into heaven.

Well, no.

Salvation comes through Jesus Christ. An indulgence can’t get you to heaven — or keep you out of hell, actually.

But once your sins have been forgiven by God, the Church teaches that there still remains a punishment necessary for your sins.

And the Church says that the grace merited by the saints themselves can be applied to that punishment, as a kind of gift, for the suitably disposed Catholic who follows the direction of the Church on the subject.

In fact, it’s probably most helpful to think of indulgences that way — as gifts mediated by the Church, the Body of Christ, for Christians along the journey.

What do you have to do to get one?

In the Jubilee Year, Catholics can obtain plenary indulgences by going to confession and receiving the Eucharist, praying for the intentions of the pope, and by making a pilgrimage to a jubilee site — either in Rome, locally designated, or a national shrine.

Of course, a lot of people aren’t able to easily make pilgrimages. So people who can’t do that can instead obtain the indulgence by performing a work of mercy, by fasting or offering up some penance, or by participating in “popular missions, spiritual exercises, or formation activities on the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, held in a church or other suitable place, according to the mind of the Holy Father” — in addition to confession, receiving the Eucharist, and praying for the intentions of the pope.

Pope Francis has also said that the elderly, homebound, imprisoned, and ill may obtain the indulgence by “living with faith and joyful hope [in] this moment of trial.”

And also detachment from all sin, right?

Right. The Church also customarily says that a person seeking a plenary indulgence should have a detachment from all sin, even venial.

That might sound impossible, and it’s sometimes taken as an impediment to the prospect of seeking indulgences. After all, most of us seem pretty attached to sin.

But the idea is customarily taken to mean that a person seeking an indulgence must be sincerely willing to renounce all sin, without saying, for example, that there are some sins he intends to hold onto or keep doing, or some sinful situations he is unwilling to change.

On the other hand, one theologian says the phrase is a misunderstanding, and should be better understood as sorrow for sins committed.

What do the holy doors in Rome have to do with this?

At each of the four major basilicas in Rome is a “holy door,” which is only opened during the once-every-25-years Jubilee Year. Those doors are designated pilgrimage spots — which means passing through them meets the pilgrimage requirement of the Jubilee Year indulgence.

Pope Francis himself was the first pilgrim of the 2025 Jubilee Year to enter one of the basilicas’ holy doors.

Pope Francis opens the holy door at St. Peter’s Basilica. Credit: Vatican Media.

As a matter of pastoral care, the pope also proclaimed a jubilee holy door at a prison in Rebibbia, on the edge of Rome, as a symbolic sign of the Church’s care for prisoners.

This sounds like a lot to do. Can’t I just buy an indulgence?

Lol, smart guy.

No.

The Church has never officially approved the sale of indulgences, and it doesn’t now either. But in the period around the Reformation, there were Churchmen — notably the Dominican Johann Tetzel — who did sell indulgences, and as you probably know, this made Martin Luther pretty angry.

But Tetzel, and people like him in the 16th century, were acting contrary to the canonical regulations of the Church, and to the Church’s doctrine on indulgences, too.

To respond, the Council of Trent said definitively that any “evil traffic” in indulgences “which has been a most prolific source of abuses among the Christian people, be absolutely abolished.”

The council said that abuses of indulgences caused scandal, and came from “superstition, ignorance, [and] irreverence.”

Ok, so they’re not for sale. But where does all this indulgence stuff actually come from in the first place? It seems kind of … strange to me.

Well, the history of indulgences is probably the most interesting thing about them.

In the early Church, apostates and other grave public sinners who wanted to be reconciled with the Church often spent time — a period of years — serving a canonical penance, which could keep them out of the life of the community.

That period could be hard; it was no picnic to be a part of the order of penitents.

At the same time, there were members of the Church who had faced direct persecution for Christ — who had been punished with prison, torture, or mutilation, alongside other believers who were eventually martyred. These Christians were revered in the early Church for their faithfulness, and referred to as “confessors” — because they had confessed the faith, and perdured in grace.

According to historians, confessors in the second century and beyond sometimes interceded for members of the penitential order, asking that their penances be relaxed or mitigated, and that they be welcomed back into the communion of the Church.

The merit within the community — the standing and sense of holiness of the confessors — became the grounds by which penitents could see the temporal punishment relaxed which had already been meted out to them.

For centuries, those who lapsed from the faith saw strict penances accorded to them. In France, for example, in the sixth century, a council of bishops decided that returning apostates should do penances for two years, fasting several days a week, and being treated during Mass like catechumens. But the intervention of holy men and women, revered in the community, often saw those penances remitted, relaxed, or commuted. And the intervention of a bishop could do the same.

By the 10th century, the idea had developed beyond assigned canonical penances to the temporal consequences of sin, connected to penances assigned in the confessional. But on a spiritual level, the pattern remained much the same: that those who had merited an abundance of grace by their holiness — including by then the saints — could intercede especially for sincere penitents, and see the temporal punishment for sins remitted.

Those indulgences became associated with pilgrimages, or works of mercy, which might commute stern penances for sin. Among the possible means of incurring an indulgence at the time was even participation in the Crusades.

In the 11th century, the idea of pious works or pilgrimages for remission of temporal punishment, apart from sacramental confession, began to shape the contemporary idea of indulgences. The idea remained the same — that from the Church’s “treasury of merit,” could come merciful relief to sinners.

This became formalized, and distinct from sacramental confession,over a period of centuries. But the idea of good works offered up — through the saints — to remit temporal punishment for sin was an important part of medieval spirituality, and by the 15th century, popes were granting indulgences to those who performed good works or supported the work of the Church.

This was abused, almost invariably. But abuse led to more regularization of indulgences, with Pope Clement IX eventually forming a Vatican congregation to oversee them, which was moved eventually the Apostolic Penitentiary.

Ok, I’m sold! So how many can I get?

The most a person could get during the Jubilee Year is one per day, or two, if the second is obtained for the good of the souls in purgatory.

Each indulgence requires receiving the Eucharist, praying for the pope’s intentions, having recently gone to confession, and performing some work of mercy, prayer, piety, or pilgrimage, as defined by the Vatican’s Jubilee Year directive.

Get after it!

This explainer was updated after publication.