The Jubilee and the local Church: Bishop of Middlesbrough
(Vatican Radio) If you are a pilgrim in Rome this week during this Year of Mercy, chances are you will have planned to go through the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica, or if you have really done your research you will be making your way to see the relics of St Pio of Pietrelcina, better known as Padre Pio and St Leopold Mandic who have both been brought to the Eternal City as part of the Jubilee celebrations.
This all sounds a wonderful way to mark this extraordinary year. But, it’s not always possible to make a journey such as this, which is why Pope Francis has insisted on the Year of Mercy being celebrated by the local Church.
Listen to Lydia O'Kane's interview with the Bishop of Middlesbrough, Terence Drainey
Local Church
The Bishop of Middlesbrough in the UK, Terence Drainey was delighted with this idea and told Vatican Radio this emphasis on the “local Church” is so important.
“The diocese that I’m in is a far flung diocese for a starter and on top of that it’s not what you might call an affluent diocese, we have some of the poorest areas in the country, the city of Hull and Middlesbrough itself find themselves in difficulty and the people are not affluent and rich, so the idea of have pilgrimages to Rome and places like that is a good idea but I suspect that the vast majority of people couldn’t even contemplate that.”
Corporal and Spiritual works of Mercy
For the Bishop this Jubilee year is significant in ways not least for the Pope ‘s emphasis on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. “The emphasis he’s putting on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy I think are really really apt for us to take hold of and to run with. From a personal point of view we have a lot of prisons within the diocese and we made sure that all the prison chaplains are part of our distribution list of whatever is going on in the diocese and I intend to make sure that I have visited all the prisons during the course of the Year of Mercy…”
Why is mercy so important?
So why is mercy so important in the age in which we live? It’s a question Lydia O’Kane put to Bishop Drainey. Well, we live in a world, I’m afraid that finds mercy quite difficult to handle; mercy is seen as a weakness… Jesus tells us that we have to learn to be merciful as the Father is merciful, which you know is the watchword of the Holy Year…”
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