Indulgences

Conditions

To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfill three conditions:

  1. Sacramental confession,
  2. Eucharistic Communion, and
  3. Prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, all to be performed within days of each other if not at the same time. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent.

Plenary Indulgence Attached to the Rosary

A plenary indulgence is granted if the Rosary is recited in a church, a public oratory, a family group, a religious Community, or pious Association; a partial indulgence is granted in other circumstances.

To receive the plenary indulgence attached to the Rosary, the following norms must be observed:

  1. The recitation of five decades only of the Rosary suffices; but the five decades must be recited continuously.
  2. The vocal recitation must be accompanied by pious meditation on the mysteries.
  3. In public recitation, the mysteries must be announced in the manner customary in the place; for private recitation, however, it suffices if the vocal recitation is accompanied by meditation on the mysteries.
  4. For those belonging to the Oriental rites, amongst whom this devotion is not practiced, the Patriarchs can determine some other prayers in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary (for those of the Byzantine rite, for example, the Hymn “Akathistos” or the Office “Paraclisis”); to the prayers thus determined are accorded the same indulgences as for the Rosary.

Source: Enchiridion of Indulgences
Issued by the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary, 1968
Published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Important: Every new Rosary must be blessed by a Catholic priest in order for it to be a SACRAMENTAL, which means that it carries the blessing of the “prayer of the Church."

What is an indulgence?

"An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.”

— Pope Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution: Indulgentarium Doctrina