He’s the one I like FOR the head of the hoteliers’ association in Rome, the announcement was “manna from heaven”. On March 13th Pope Francis declared an extraordinary jubilee, or holy year, to last from December 8th 2015 until November 20th 2016. (Ordinary jubilees are proclaimed every 25 years; the pontiff has the right to proclaim extra ones if he feels the spiritual need.)
God and Mammon have often been uncomfortably close during holy years, a time when Catholics are encouraged to make pilgrimages to Rome, intensify their devotions, and meditate on such themes as mercy and pardon. In the late Middle Ages, the church used jubilees to market indulgences, purporting to shorten the recipient’s stay in purgatory. Nowadays, holy years mostly generate profits for others. Shares in Atlantia, Italy’s biggest motorway concessionary, leapt by more than 3% after last week’s news.
“The flow of visitors is not concentrated into a brief period, as happens with big sporting events like the Olympic Games or the [football] World Cup,” notes Matteo Caroli, a professor at the business-oriented Luiss University in Rome. The…
