Pope Says Repentance Is Key to Millennium ‘Jubilee’

With 13 months’ notice, Pope John Paul II invited Roman Catholics on Friday to take part in the grandest event of his papacy--a yearlong “Jubilee” celebration of Jesus’ 2,000th birthday--by repenting of their own sins and those of errant Catholics across the ages.

“As the successor of St. Peter, I ask that in this year of mercy, the church . . . should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters,” John Paul wrote in a papal bull formally declaring the milestone a Holy Year.

Urging financial mercy as well, he suggested that rich creditors greet the millennium by relieving poor nations of their debts. He urged “a new culture of international solidarity” in which “wealthy nations and the private sector accept . . . an economic model that serves everyone.”

The pope, according to the document, will kick off the year with a ritual that signifies passage from sin to grace--a walk through the “holy door” of St. Peter’s Basilica for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 1999. Festivities are planned a few hours later in Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace, and in Jerusalem.

Millions of pilgrims are expected to flock to Rome and the Holy Land before the Holy Year closes Jan. 6, 2001, the feast of the Epiphany. The pope invited Jews and Muslims to attend the Jerusalem ceremonies and make the Holy Year “a journey of reconciliation” among faiths.

John Paul, 78, is struggling against age and infirmity to lead his church into the next millennium--a mission he says God chose for him at the start of his papacy 20 years ago. He first spelled out the Holy Year’s theme of repentance and renewal in a papal letter four years ago.

As in that document, Friday’s bull, “The Mystery of the Incarnation,” does not dwell on particular sins that Catholics have committed in the name of their faith. A panel of Vatican theologians is working on that; the list, to be unveiled by 2000, is expected to include the Crusades, the Inquisition, forced evangelization of the New World and the Catholic Church’s failure to speak strongly against slavery and the Holocaust.

As in previous Holy Years, Catholics who make pilgrimages, perform charity or abstain for at least one day from smoking or drinking can obtain special indulgences for their own sins. Any church or shrine so designated by the local bishop may count as a pilgrimage site.

According to Catholic teaching, an indulgence is a complete or partial reduction of the punishment still awaiting a sinner who has been forgiven in a confessional. Indulgences can be awarded by the church for certain acts of self-sacrifice, but the practice has faded in recent generations.

The tradition, however, fits into the pope’s drive to purify his church for the next millennium, so the bull offers a five-page appendix on how to gain a “Jubilee indulgence.”

At a news conference presenting the bull, Vatican officials warned Catholics that an act of charity or abstinence would not gain an indulgence unless it was motivated by a penitential spirit and marked “the conclusion of an inner journey.”

“One could be tempted to think: ‘Today I won’t smoke or I won’t drink wine. I’ll get a [full] indulgence, and I’ll go to paradise,’ ” said Msgr. Crescenzio Sepe, secretary of the Vatican’s Committee for 2000.

“No, that’s not the spirit of indulgence,” he added. “That would be like returning to the thinking of the Middle Ages.”