Pope Envoy to Open UST's 400th Year Fete

MANILA, Jan. 21, 2011—A ranking Vatican official will pay a visit to Manila next week to grace the 400th anniversary celebration of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), the oldest university in Asia.

Papal legate Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski will lead the Mass to formally open the pontifical university’s quadricentennial year.

Grocholewski will be the main homilist, together with Dominican Master General Fr. Bruno Cadore, the chancellor of the university, and other ranking officials of the Philippine curia, as concelebrants.

The Polish cardinal will be joined a by a number of Filipino prelates, most of them graduates of the UST Central Seminary.

“He is just here to celebrate the Mass and he would leave afterward for Rome,” said UST Rector Fr. Rolando de la Rosa during a press conference Friday.

Grocholewski is the Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education in Vatican which is responsible for almost 1,000 Catholic universities, 150 theological centers as well as more than 3,000 ecclesial seminaries.

De la Rosa also said that the UST has received an “extraordinary grant” of plenary indulgence from Pope Benedict XVI to usher in the opening of the Jubilee Door and Mass for university’s Quadricentennial week which begins on Jan. 24.

In a letter through Cardinal Fortunato Baldelli, head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary, the pontiff mandated the grant of indulgence “under the usual conditions of Sacramental Confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayers for the intentions of the Holy Father” to be gained by visiting the Santisimo Rosario Church from January 2011 to January 2012.

“So we have to take advantage of this. The pope has granted all those who would attend the quadricentennial Mass and activities in the university a plenary indulgence,” he said.

Plenary indulgence, according to him, “is a gift from the Lord that is tantamount to the remission of all punishment due to sin that is already forgiven.”

The opening of the Jubilee Door will be highlighted by a Mass for students at 5:15 p.m. at the Santisimo Rosario Church to be presided by Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales. (CBCPNews)