Year of Mercy ‘is a message for the October Synod’

Pope Francis is likely to have chosen the theme of mercy for the extraordinary Jubilee Year that he announced last Friday to influence the outcome of this autumn’s Synod on the Family, according to a leading Italian theologian.

The year will commence with the opening of the Holy Door in St Peter’s on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, 8 December, and will conclude on 20 November 2016 with the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

This year’s synod will run from 4 to 25 October. It is expected to be just as controversial as the 2014 synod, with opposing factions thought to be no closer to reconciliation on the acceptance of gays or of the divorced and remarried.

But with the Year of Mercy beginning shortly after the synod ends, the theme of the Holy Year could help to concentrate the minds of those present - in the direction of “mercy”, according to the Italian theologian Gianni Gennari, a columnist on the Italian bishops’ daily, Avvenire.

Announcing the Holy Year during a penitential service in St Peter’s Basilica, Francis said he had “thought often about how the Church can make more evident its mission of being a witness of mercy”. He said: “The whole Church – that has much need to receive mercy because we are sinners – will find in this jubilee the joy to rediscover and render fruitful the mercy of God, with which we are all called to give consolation to every man and woman.”

Dr Gennari said there was an “obvious” reason for the choice of theme. “The jubilee will come just after the end of the synod,” he said. “It seems that the Pope has indicated that the line ... to follow is mercy. It is difficult to imagine that the conclusions of the synod will not be in line with the jubilee.”