Today marks the formal close of the special jubilee Holy Year of Mercy launched by Pope Francis last December 8, and as the curtain comes down, it’s inevitable that the question will arise: Was the year a success?
One way of answering that question is to regard the jubilee as a big event, or a series of big events, and use the conventional measures of assessing such things: Turnout, enthusiasm, hotel bookings, revenue for restaurants and gift shops, and so on.
By those yardsticks, Vatican officials have been at pains to fight off perceptions that the jubilee has been a flop. They insist that 20 million people have come through Rome at one point or another to take part in jubilee events, which would put 2016 only five million behind the crowds for the great jubilee of 2000 under St. Pope John Paul II.
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