Kabale Diocese has started program of Jubilee Year pilgrimage on Deanery level with Makiro Deanery becoming the first one to benefit from this program.
The Jubilee Year 2025 with theme “Pilgrms of Hope” focuses on reconciliation because people should amend their broken relationship with their God and others. It’s time to forgive the wrongs and heal for the wounds of unforgiveness.
While conducting one of the sessions, Fr. Fidel Ndagijimana, Pastoral Coordinator for Kabale Diocese said that the Jubilee Year also focuses on God’s mercy and love showing that God does not abandon his people in their desperate situations for example sickness, unemployment, calamity, ans other challenging situations. More devotion to the Divine Mercy should be encouraged and promoted and portraits of the Divine Mercy should be present in each family so that people’s hopes are renewed.
Fr. Fidel said that beyond prayer, the Jubilee Year urges people to take action and restore peace and sanity in the world. Many countries and regions are ravaged by war and people have become homeless, others lost their lives. The Jubilee Year calls for cessation of arms race and prevalence of peace. Like St. Francis of Assisi who prayed to be an instrument of peace, people should a source of peace and an extension of peace to the others.
The dicastery for the evangelization spells out what is expected of the people in the Jubilee Year and these are 7 characteristics of a Jubilee Year.
1. Pilgrimage: In the Jubilee Year, people are expected and encouraged to make a pilgrimage to the Holy places both locally and internationally (Rome, Holy Land, Lourdes, Namugongo among others). Kabale Diocese has a arranged that pilgrimagea be made on Deaneries, to Namugongo, Kibeho and Rome.
2. Passing through the Holy Door: Christians are invites to make a pilgrimage and subsequently pass through the Holy Door. In the Diocese, Deanery churches will have their principal doors opened so that people go through.
3. Indulgences: An induigence is an experience of God’s mercy to a sinner. The purpose of indulgence in the Catholic Church is to provide remission of punishment for sin. Anyone who visits any of the declared Jubilee churches and entered through the Holy Doors will be granted an indulgence for removal of temporal punishment due to forgiven sin.
4. Reconciliation: Reconciliation with God and fell man is part and parcel of the Jubilee Year, with Sacrament of Penance at the centre where Christians are encouraged to seek confession as a way of beginning a new life and priests are encouraged to be available for the penitents. Through dialogue, people need to critically examine that which has torn them apart leading to war and separation.
5. Prayer: The Jubilee Year is accompanied with Prayer. When Pope Francis announced the Jubilee year he said: “I ask you to intensify your prayer to prepare us to live this event of grace well, and to experience the strength of God’s hope.” Christians are invited to promote importance of individual and communal prayer as means to open up to God’s presence and his offer of live.
6. Liturgy: Liturgy is a public prayer of the Church; a source and summit of the Christian life and Christians are called to re-examine our understanding of Holy Mass as supreme act of worship and centre of liturgical life of the Church. The creed offers the Christian a concrete belief system on which their faith is grounded.
7. Profession of faith (creed): It summarizes the teaching of the catholic faith. It’s the identity of the baptized person and generally referred to as the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed. The Jubilee Year 2025 coincides with 1700th Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (sat at Nicaea in 325AD) in which bishops gathered to discuss doctrinal and disciplinary matters in the Church.
Fr. Young Innocent Buregyeya also taught about the Jubilee Year as an expression of God’s mercy towards his people. He said the Holy Door of Makiro parish was going to be opened on Divine Mercy Sunday on a day when Jesus, through St. Faustina promised those who celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday with proper disposition receive indulgence. He outlined 7 deadly sins which penance Pride, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, avarice and Pride are a mother of all other sins and must be taken to the sacrament of penance.
In another session, Sr. Judith Atukwatse, coordinator of Family Ministries reminded the married couples to invite the Holy Spirit to renew their faith and hope in the Lord. She invited the couples to examine themselves and rediscover where their hope and trust has dwindled so that they renew themselves, work together, have family meetings, forgive each other where things go wrong. She also implered them to always sieve the words they speak so that their word become a source of peace, love, joy happiness and above all development.
Those who guard their mouths and their tongues keep themselves from calamity (Proverbs 21:23).
She asked married couples to renew their love for each other by asking if you were given a chance to choose another man or woman, who would chose the current husband or wife?? Or it would be an opportunity to let him/her go and thank god for that opportunity??
They have also not been advised to grant respect to themselves especially in front of their children. There is a big bond between the child and the mother than the father, but that should not be an opportunity to let the child hate the father because they are with their mothers most for the time. Families have been torn apart by lack of trust among the couples, alcoholism which had escalated domestic and gender-based violence. Therefore, go back to drawing board and face reality together as a family and look for solutions together, pray together, have family meetings and plan together for the development of families.
Among the dignitaries that attended the Saturday sessions including Hon. Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, member of parliament for Kinkizi East and Minister for ICT and National Guidance who tha ked people for always sparing time to consult with God for the good of their lives, their families and their nation.