mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

17
The Holy Jubilee Year
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We are all Pilgrims, who seek Italy.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Though he was humiliated at home and abroad, Innocent’s
luck was about to change. For he had the good fortune to be
pope during the jubilee, a yearlong religious festival that Pope
Boniface VIII had started in 1300 to bring God into the hearts of men
and money into the coffers of Rome. During the jubilee, held every
twenty-five years, the pope was the star of the European stage, and the
church reigned triumphant.
Pilgrims flocked to Rome to obtain the indulgence of sins. The
Catholic sacrament of penance affirms that in order to have sins forgiven
the sinner must have a sincerely contrite heart, confess to a priest,
who represents God, and make restitution to those he has harmed. Finally,
he must endure either an earthly punishment or suffer in purgatory
after death. It was far safer, Catholics believed, for the sinner to
choose his own chastisement than to wait until after death and let God
concoct the appropriate penalty. Self-imposed punishments included
fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and making a long journey to a holy site. A
pilgrimage was a popular form of punishment as it allowed the sinner
to get in a great deal of sightseeing.