(ZENIT News / Rome, 11.01.2025).- When Pope Leo XIV signed the decree granting a plenary indulgence to pilgrims visiting the shrines of the Mother Thrice Admirable, Queen, and Victress of Schoenstatt, he did more than bestow a spiritual privilege. He renewed a century-old current of Marian devotion that has quietly shaped Catholic spirituality around the world.
The indulgence, announced at the start of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary’s centennial jubilee, is available from October 1, 2025, through November 4, 2026. It embraces all those who, with sincere repentance and love, journey to the original Schoenstatt Shrine in Vallendar, Germany—or to any of the hundreds of affiliated sanctuaries and chapels spread across the continents.
According to the Apostolic Penitentiary’s decree, this grace is open not only to members of the Institute but to any of the faithful who unite themselves spiritually with the jubilee’s intentions. In keeping with long-standing Catholic practice, the indulgence may also be offered on behalf of a departed soul.
The Schoenstatt Movement, born in the shadow of the First World War, has always blended deep Marian piety with a call to interior renewal. In a statement, the movement described the indulgence as “a divine call—through the Church—to a deeper purification of heart.” The Sisters of Mary, who form one of the movement’s most visible branches, see this jubilee year as a threshold moment: a time, as they wrote, when “God’s grace sustains us more perceptibly at the dawn of a new era for our family.”
The decree outlines the spiritual conditions for receiving the plenary indulgence: confession, the reception of Holy Communion, prayer for the Pope’s intentions—including the Our Father, the Creed, and an invocation to Mary as Queen of Peace and Mother of Mercy—alongside acts of penance and charity. Pilgrims are also encouraged to spend time in prayerful silence and reflection before the Blessed Sacrament or in Marian devotion at the shrine.
For many Schoenstatt devotees, this indulgence is not merely about spiritual benefit but about continuity. Now, more than a century later, that covenant continues to ripple outward—through families, parishes, and religious communities inspired by the Schoenstatt charism. The centennial indulgence, in this sense, is both a celebration and a summons: an invitation to rediscover what it means to be renewed from within, under Mary’s maternal gaze.
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