By Maria Wiering
(OSV News) – Participants in the National Eucharistic Congress and related National Eucharistic Pilgrimage now have opportunities to receive plenary indulgences, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced April 9.

“It is with gratitude to the Holy Father that we receive his Apostolic Blessing upon the participants in the National Eucharistic Congress, and for the opportunity for Catholics in our country to obtain a plenary indulgence by participating in the events of the Eucharistic Revival,” he said in a USCCB statement.

According to the statement, Archbishop Broglio, who also leads the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, had requested that a plenary indulgence be available to Catholics who participate in the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and that “he or another prelate be designated to impart the Apostolic Blessing with a Plenary Indulgence” to the faithful joining the National Eucharistic Congress.

The requests were granted in two separate decrees by the Apostolic Penitentiary, an office with the church’s central administrative body known as the Roman Curia, which grants the use of indulgences “as expressions of divine mercy,” the statement said. Both decrees were approved by Pope Francis.
The congress and preceding pilgrimage are efforts of the National Eucharistic Revival, a three-year initiative of the U.S. bishops that began in 2022 to inspire greater understanding of and love for Jesus in the Eucharist. Held in Indianapolis July 17-21 at Lucas Oil Stadium, the congress aims to bring together tens of thousands of Catholics for liturgies, devotions and well-known Catholic speakers.

Beginning the weekend of May 17-18, 24 young adults in four groups are traveling thousands of miles to the congress from starting points in California, Connecticut, Minnesota and Texas. Pilgrims in this National Eucharistic Pilgrimage plan to travel – often by foot – with the Eucharist in a monstrance, with stops along the routes for Mass and Eucharistic adoration at local parishes and national shrines. The “perpetual pilgrims” anticipate thousands of Catholics from across the country will join them at pilgrimage events or journey with them for segments of the routes.

Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, chair of the board of directors of the National Eucharistic Congress, told OSV News that the “tradition of giving an indulgence for pilgrimages and important celebrations is ancient.”

“We are grateful to the Holy Father through the Apostolic Penitentiary that offers this blessing to those who are seeking to grow in greater purity of heart through the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and Congress,” he said. “These events will be great moments of conversion which this indulgence points to as we seek to be free from the effects of our sins. We are grateful for the Holy Father’s blessing on these events.

He added, “Pope Francis himself said that (the) ‘National Eucharistic Congress marks a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States’ and he prayed that the National Eucharistic Congress would guide men and women throughout our country to the Lord who, by his presence among us, rekindles hope and renews life.”

According to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Indulgences are the remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. The faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains the indulgence under prescribed conditions for either himself or the departed. Indulgences are granted through the ministry of the Church which, as the dispenser of the grace of redemption, distributes the treasury of the merits of Christ and the Saints.”

One may obtain indulgences for other people, but can only apply them to the souls in purgatory. One may also obtain the indulgence for oneself. But one cannot apply an indulgence to another living person; that person (unlike someone in purgatory) can still obtain one for himself or herself.

The plenary indulgence for National Eucharistic Pilgrimage is granted to anyone who participates in the pilgrimage between May 17 and July 16, as well as to elders, people with infirmities and “all those who cannot leave their homes for a serious reason and who participate in spirit with the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, uniting their prayers, pains, or inconveniences with Christ and the pilgrimage,” the USCCB statement said. To receive the indulgence, an individual must fulfill the usual conditions: sacramental confession, Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father.

In granting the indulgence, the Apostolic Penitentiary requests that all priests with appropriate faculties “present themselves willingly and generously in administering the Sacrament of Penance” to pilgrimage participants, according to the statement.

The second decree of the papal blessing with plenary indulgence for the National Eucharistic Congress empowers Archbishop Broglio or another prelate assigned by him to impart it, following Mass, to the faithful participating in the congress. As is the case with the previous indulgence, Catholics must be truly repentant of their sins, be motivated by charity, and meet the usual conditions of sacramental confession, Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father.

However, Catholics who “due to reasonable circumstances and with pious intention” cannot be physically at the congress may also receive the indulgence if they have participated in Mass and received the blessing through media communications.

“Through the efforts of the revival over the last two years, we have been building up to the pilgrimage and congress that will offer Catholics a chance to experience a profound, personal revival of faith in the Eucharist,” said Archbishop Broglio. “Pope Francis continues to encourage and support us as we seek to share Christ’s love with a world that is desperately in need of Him.”

The National Eucharistic Revival continues after the congress through 2025 with a “Year of Missionary Sending.”

(Maria Wiering is senior writer for OSV News.)

(Editor’s note: The Southern route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage (St. Juan Diego route) will be traveling through the Diocese of Biloxi between June 10-14. Visit https://www.biloxidiocese.org/eucharist and click on the button “Eucharistic Revival Procession (Across the Coast)” to view a schedule of events.)

By Maria del Pilar Guzman
(OSV News) – When Eduardo Lopez de Casas was abused by a priest during his school years, he could not bring himself to tell his mother what was happening, fearing it would ruin her faith in the Catholic Church. Having grown up hearing about her mother’s upbringing – and how she came to find solace in her faith after becoming an orphan at an early age in Mexico City – Lopez de Casas “did not want, ever, to come in between my mother’s faith because it was so strong.”

Lopez de Casas’ mother passed away in 2021, never hearing of her son’s plight with the abuse he had suffered at the hands of a man who was supposed to offer him guidance.

Now the vice president of the board of directors for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Lopez de Casas shared his story in the January webinar “Courageous Conversations: How Immigrant Voices Are Silenced in Church Abuse,” part of a speaker series hosted by Awake, a survivor support and advocacy organization that works to support survivors and educate Catholics on the issue of sexual abuse within the church.

The independent nonprofit was established in 2019 in Milwaukee by a small group of Catholics and recently broadened its focus. Its mission? To “awaken our community to the full reality of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, work for transformation, and foster healing for all those who’ve been wounded,” Catherine Owers, Awake’s community engagement specialist, told OSV News in March.

Owers said the Courageous Conversations episode speaks directly to the first part of the mission statement – awaken our community to the full reality of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church – as many people, when they think about abuse in the church and survivors of abuse, “they have this classic image of an older man, usually an older white man, who has abused the child, (such as) a priest and maybe the child was serving as an altar boy.”

While that is true in many cases, there are other kinds of survivors, Owers affirmed.

“People of color, women, survivors who have experienced abuse as adults, maybe not by priests but by other religious leaders, by religious sisters, by lay ministers,” Owers said, adding, “So, having these conversations, where we’re really highlighting the diversity of stories, I think it’s just so tremendously important.”

Aside from Lopez de Casas, the webinar also gave voice to Aimee Torres, a Filipino filmmaker from Los Angeles who was harmed by a priest when she was a child, and Susan Bigelow Reynolds, assistant professor of Catholic Studies in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Reynolds, whose essay “’I Will Surely Have You Deported’: Undocumenting Clergy Sexual Abuse in Immigrant Communities” was published in the journal Religion and American Culture in 2023, said that, for her research, she examined the case of Peter Edward Garcia. A priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from the 1960s through the 1980s, Garcia targeted the children of undocumented immigrants for sexual abuse, threatening them with deportation if they ever told on him.

“(Garcia) served for a time as the head of Hispanic outreach in the archdiocese, which gave him a really unique, trusted status, particularly for recently arrived families,” Reynolds shared during the webinar. He would then “use families’ undocumented status to threaten these children effectively, children and teenagers … who feel an obvious and understandable sense of loyalty and fidelity to their families, into silence, to scare them not to report their violence,” she added.

Garcia was accused of abusing at least 12 minors in a period of 20 years. He was laicized in 2006 and died in 2009, according to records from bishop-accountability.org.

Reynolds pointed to power abuse and clericalism as chief contributors to the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as, because of these, perpetrators enjoyed immunity from criminal prosecution due to their position in the church.

However, clericalism does not operate in a vacuum, Reynolds said.

“Clericalism gains traction, gains force and power by trading on other structures of domination based on race and ethnicity and class and legal status and gender and age,” she said.

Torres can see the power dynamics at play in her experience of abuse. Growing up in a predominantly Catholic family of Filipino immigrants, she witnessed how priests held revered status within her community and how they were viewed as “little kings.” Inevitably conditioned by her culture, she did not report the abuse she suffered at the hands of a priest, a close friend of an aunt, between the ages of 8 and 12, until she was 17.

“The priest that abused me; he used his power as a priest over me because I felt, at the time, that I was doing something wrong,” Torres said. “At that point, you feel so small over somebody like this,” she added.

Because immigrants experience unique challenges associated with economic hardships, language and discrimination, among others, they become more vulnerable to potential acts of abuse.

Even before the death of her father at a young age, Torres’ mother, dealing with financial pressures, worked “full-time and lacked resources for child care,” leaving Torres and her sister in the care of her aunt.

“The priest that abused me, he would come over every Sunday after Mass at his parish and stay over at her (aunt’s) house, and that’s where the abuse happened,” she shared.

For Lopez de Casas, it was the language barrier that became the ultimate obstacle when he tried to report his first instances of abuse at school (this was before being abused by a priest). Wanting to know what was happening to their son, Lopez de Casas’ parents met with the school principal, counselors, and teachers. Not speaking English, they resorted to a translator.

However, “from the very beginning, even though I was very young, I did learn immediately at these meetings that, whenever I would say something, they would translate my statements to my mom, but they were very whitewashed … they would do it in a way that made me look bad and made the predators look sane,” he said.

This shaped how he would report – or not – future instances of abuse.
Responding to Reynolds’ call at the end of the webinar to look “harder for the stories” of immigrants who have suffered abuse within the church “and bring them to light,” Owers said Awake continues to work toward bridging “the gap between survivors and concerned Catholics who want to learn more.”

In an earlier interview with OSV News, Sara Larson, Awake’s executive director, said she has seen “so many survivors work so hard to disentangle their abuser and the things he or she said or did or the way that spirituality was used – disentangle that from their own spiritual life, their own understanding of God and, for some, their own relationship with the church.”

Awake has a “desire to be really survivor-centered,” and to “make sure that when people are engaging with abuse survivors, that they’re ready for that and have the training and an approach that’s not going to cause additional harm,” she said.

“(Survivors) are out there, and they are part of our community,” Owers said.

“We also want to continue to connect with church leaders and provide resources for them to help the church become safer, more accountable, and more compassionate,” she added.

(Maria del Pilar Guzman writes for OSV News from Boston. Notes: To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 800-656-HOPE (4673)

For more information about Awake, visit: https://www.awakecommunity.org/)