End of the Year

On his knees before the Holy Door of St. Peter's, white-mantled Pope Pius XII lifted a golden trowel. In the center of the door's threshold, he placed a dab of slaked lime with the words: "In fide et virtute Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Filii Dei Vivi [In the faith and the strength of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God]." Continuing to intone the Latin formula, he placed lime to the right and left on the threshold, then laid three bricks--one gilt and two silvered--in the mortar. Thus, a year after he had opened it, the Pope this week symbolically sealed up the Holy Door and ended the Holy Year of 1950.

In many ways, it had been the greatest of all Holy Years the Roman Catholic Church has celebrated since the first in 1300. More pilgrims had come to Rome than ever before--3,200,000, compared to the 582,000 in 1925 and the 350,000 in 1900. More canonizations and beatifications had taken place (eight of each) than in any other Holy Year. A new dogma of the church--the bodily Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven (TIME, Nov. 6) --had been pronounced. And in his final Holy Year address last week, the Pope made an announcement which Catholics had long waited to hear. The tomb of St. Peter, he said, had definitely been found under St. Peter's basilica.

One of the most surprising phenomena of the year had been the formidable strength and staying power of the frail-looking, 74-year-old Pontiff himself. No Pope had been seen by so many in a similar length of time; thousands were received in special or private audiences, 2,830,000 crowded into St. Peter's for general audiences, sometimes more than 40,000 at a time. During the year, 42,000 pilgrims took part in 34 international congresses held in Rome, and 203,558 visited special exhibitions of missionary art.

The Holy Year was over, but Roman Catholics everywhere could still earn the plenary indulgence (remission of temporal punishment for sin) earned last year by all who went to Rome. Following a precedent established in 1500, the Pope proclaimed that, during the year 1951, the faithful who had been unable to make the journey to Rome could earn the indulgence by observing designated terms of the jubilee in their own diocese.

To Roman Catholics, the success of the Holy Year was a bright beam of light in a dark, uneasy world. Msgr. Sergio Pignedoli, director of the Holy Year Central Committee, summed it up: "This year's great discovery is that in a world apparently skeptical and indifferent, there's a vigorous current of faith."

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