Your Local Titulars

Making the most of your local titular feasts

A plenary indulgence is offered, under grant 33, for those who go to a church on the feast of its titular. To paraphrase, the indulgence guidelines are as follows: ‘A plenary indulgence is granted to the faithful who visit, and there devoutly recite an Our Father and the Creed, b. on the solemnity of its Titular; -a minor basilica -the cathedral church -a parish church -an international, national, or diocesan shrine established by competent authority.’

A Titular is patron saint or mystery of a church, which that church is often named after. For example: the Holy Cross is the titular (patron mystery) of churches named “[Catholic] Church of the Most Holy Cross.” It’s feast day would be September 14th. St. Andrew is the titular (patron saint) of churches named “St. Andrew Catholic Church.” These church’s feast day would be November 30th.

In this article I would like to help you discover the titular saints of churches that you can reasonably travel to, and to further encourage you to travel, and visit, and gain a plenary indulgence.

Did you know that there is a saint’s feast day on virtually every day of the year? Even on leap-year-day we celebrate the feasts of Saint Augustus Chapdelaine, Saint (Pope) Hilary, and Saint Oswald (their feasts are moved to the 28^th on non-leap-years.) So, in theory, and if travel was no issue, you could very well gain a partial indulgence by visiting a church on its titular feast every day of the year!

However, travel is an issue. As creatures of time and space we can only occupy so many locations within a certain amount of time. That is to say, unless you were strictly dedicated to this goal, there is no way we could accomplish gaining this specific plenary indulgence every day. What is more reasonable is that we maybe could accomplish a titular indulgence every once in a while. Let’s say, on the feasts of only the churches that are close to us.

And so this is my encouragement! I encourage you to look up every church that you can reasonably travel to from your home, and look up the feast days of the titular that they have named. I have found it to be very helpful to use the website called "MassTimes" since they are able to take any location and show you the mass, confession, and adoration times of many nearby church.

Take the church names you find and mark their feast days (according to their patron’s name) on your calendar. If you travel to a secondary/seasonal spot, you can do this for that location too. Lastly, if a patron's name or feast day is not clear (like for Mary’s many feast days) I would suggest opting out of this particular titular indulgence for that church.

Now there is not pressure for you to go to these churches and gain this particular plenary indulgence. There are other daily actions that offer plenary indulgences if you are interested, like reading scripture for a half an hour, praying the Rosary in certain conditions, and going to Adoration for a half an hour. But, and this may just be my personal opinion, but I find it rather pleasant to gain a titular indulgence. Or at least knowing that I have the option to, depending on the date and the churches closest to me. And I hope you may enjoy that option for you too.

I hope this has been helpful. Indulgences can be a confusing topic so please feel free to leave your thoughts and questions. I hope to address all I can so that we can come to know this hidden gem of the Catholic Faith.