Year of Mercy: A guide to what is going on around the dioceses and where to find a Holy Door

Cathedrals around the country will be following the example of Pope Francis next Tuesday, 8 December as he crosses the threshold of the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica to inaugurate the Holy Year of Mercy.

On Sunday 13 December, the Bishop of Clifton, Declan Lang, will open a door of pilgrimage during a Mass at Clifton Cathedral in Bristol at the same time as two more are opened at St Mary’s, Glastonbury, and Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire. The following Saturday (19.12) a fourth will open at Downside Abbey, Bath.

The Bishop is also inviting people to join him on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in October 2016 and to Glastonbury in July.

In Salford, where six doors are being opened around the diocese, the Year of Mercy’ will begin at Salford Cathedral on Tuesday when a portable door will be unveiled. It will then be taken on a year-long journey around every school in the diocese. On December 13 Bishop John Arnold will symbolically enter Salford Cathedral’s own door during Mass.

The Year of Mercy begins early in Merseyside this Sunday afternoon (6 December) when the Archbishop of Liverpool, Malcolm McMahon, blesses and opens the Metropolitan Cathedral’s own Door of Mercy during Mass. The Archbishop will open two more Doors – at Holy Cross in St Helens and St Mary’s in Leyland – during Tuesday. (8 December)

The Bishop of Shrewsbury, Mark Davies, will open a Holy Door at St Anthony’s Church in Wythenshawe, on the edge of Manchester on Saturday 12 December. It will remain there until Easter when it will move to Shrewsbury Cathedral. He said: “The Holy Door will be a place for us of personal or group pilgrimages,” adding: “The corporal works of mercy include feeding the hungry; giving drink to the thirsty; clothing the naked; sheltering the homeless; visiting the sick and imprisoned; and reverently burying the dead.

“We can also open the Doors of Mercy to others through the spiritual works of: counselling the doubtful; instructing the ignorant; correcting the sinner; comforting the afflicted; forgiving offences; bearing wrongs patiently; and praying for the living and for the dead. It is in this way, we become “merciful like our heavenly Father.”

In Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols will be at the Cathedral on 13 December to open the Holy Door, 14 more will be opened shortly after at churches from Welwyn Garden City to Lincolns Inn Fields.

The Archbishop of Cardiff, George Stack,  will open the Holy Door St. David’s Cathedral in the city during a Choral Mass on 13 December. Four other doors will also be opened at historic sites in the north, south, east and west of the diocese at Belmont Abbey, Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil and Newport.

Every parish has received two large banners – one for the sanctuary and one to hang outside the church. The outside banner has a picture of Pope Francis with his words “None is excluded from the mercy of God”. Banners have also gone to Catholic schools in the diocese and 25,000 copies of the Pope’s Prayer for the Year of Mercy’ have distributed - one for each parishioner and pupil.

On Sunday 13 December, The Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Richard Moth, will lead a procession from the Cathedral Centre to Arundel Cathedral when the Holy Door will be opened, followed by Mass.