First Holy Door outside Europe inaugurated

Archbishop Gerald Lacroix walked through the first Holy Door outside Europe on 8 December, to inaugurate the Jubilee year marking the 350th anniversary of the oldest Catholic diocese in North America.

The sculpted bronze door on the left side of Quebec City’s Notre-Dame de Québec basilica is two-sided, with Christ on one side and Mary on the other. The open-armed Jesus is “very prophetic in the history of the Church”, Archbishop Lacroix said afterwards. “Maybe in some other time we would have had a crucified Christ or we would have some other image of Jesus but this time he’s got open arms and he is welcoming.”

The archbishop told the media he hopes the year might appeal to “many Catholics who may have become distant from the Church in past years, who are maybe not practising.”
Well over a million visitors are expected. The door will be opened for one year and then locked until the next time the Holy Doors in Rome are opened, in 2025. Archbishop Lacroix and the Quebec Assembly of Bishops hope that the year-long celebration might help in the growing resistance to the proposed “Secular Charter of Quebec”, which makes illegal the display of religious symbols or dress by anyone working in the provincial public service. Since the legislation was introduced in the National Assembly in November the City of Montreal has voted unanimously to ask the provincial government to retract or at least rethink its plans.

Holy doors are opened once every 25 years and sealed after the Jubilee. Notre-Dame is the seventh in the Catholic world: four are in Rome, one in Ars-sur-Formans, France, and one in Santiago de Compostela in Spain.