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While the Shroud of Turin is displayed later this year, local priests have been given faculties to reconcile women who confess to having had an abortion.
The goal of the special faculties granted by Turin’s Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia is to ensure that the public display of the shroud promotes conversion and healing.
The shroud, which shows a faint image of a crucified man, is believed by some to be a burial garment of Jesus Christ.
It is to be displayed from April 19 to June 24, reported the Catholic News Service.
According to the Code of Canon Law, “A person who procures a completed abortion” automatically incurs excommunication.
To be excommunicated, a person has to know that procuring an abortion is an excommunicable offence.
Canon law lays out various reasons where such a sanction may not apply, including ignorance of the law, acting out of grave fear, errors as to the scope of the law, lack of the use of reason and age.
A person who believes they have been excommunicated must refrain from Holy Communion until both absolution for the sin and absolution for the excommunication have been given, according to an EWTN article.
Where the conditions for an excommunication do exist, only the bishop or a priest he designates can lift the penalty.
In some dioceses the local bishop has formally granted the faculty to all priests, while in Turin and other places, the bishop grants the faculty on special occasions.
Archbishop Nosiglia wrote that the Church’s ministers, meeting the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims expected to visit the Turin cathedral to see the shroud, want to “concretely demonstrate the Father’s mercy toward those who repent of an evil committed”.
However, he said, the permission granted to priests is limited to the time of the shroud’s public display so as not to “diminish the rigour of the law”, which aims to teach people how seriously wrong it is to kill an innocent life.
Archbishop Nosiglia also asked priests to impose a penance that would help lead to a lasting conversion.
Sources
- Catholic Herald
- EWTN
- Image: The Guardian
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