The HOLY DOOR in Quebec Opening a Holy Door has long been part of jubilee ceremonies. None was more moving than Christmas Eve 1999, when an ailing Pope John Paul II, bent in his infirmity, knelt on the threshold of St. Peter’s Basilica Holy Door at the Vatican. Holy doors, which are sealed after the jubilee, are opened only once every 25 years. Notre-Dame becomes the seventh Holy Door in the Catholic world — four are in Rome, one in Ars-sur-Formans, France, the other in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. “With the Holy Door, we invite people to come to Quebec with their own faith, with what they live, as a heritage from the missionaries of the 17th century,” says Monsignor Denis Belanger, the priest at Notre Dame. “This door is open to all persons of good will. For Catholics it is a pilgrimage, a sign, a passage, a kind of spiritual preparation.” The door — two-sided bronze, with Christ on one side, Mary on the other — will be opened for one year and then locked until the next time the Holy Doors in Rome are opened, in 2025. The door is on the left side of the cathedral. Workers broke open a wall to create the door, which now leads from a garden into what was a small chapel. The chapel gives way to the cathedral .
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 20:54:31 +0000