Vatican City, Feb 22, 2021 / 05:30 am
The penance called for in the Christian life, and accentuated during Lent, can help us make sense of the sacrifices we have been called on to make during the coronavirus pandemic, a Vatican cardinal has said.
In a letter for Lent 2021, published in L'Osservatore Romano on Feb. 18, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza reflected on "penance in the time of emergency."
Piacenza is major penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a tribunal of the Apostolic See which has jurisdiction over indulgences and the absolution of the gravest sins.
He wrote that the 40 days of Lent and Christ's victory over evil have "an incomparable importance for the life of man, because they concern not only the temporal good of bodily health, but the much more radical one of eternal salvation."