Holy Year of Mercy

Saint Martin of Tours sharing his cloak with a beggar; the inscription 'GIUBILEO DELLA MISERICORDIA', the state name 'CITTÀ DEL VATICANO', the year '2016', the name of designer Mariangela Crisciotti, the initials of engraver Claudia Momoni, and the mint mark 'R'.

The Holy Year — Latin Annus Sanctus, or Jubilee Year — is a tradition of the Roman Catholic Church rooted in the Middle Ages. Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first such Jubilee Year in 1300; since then, these extraordinary years of grace have been declared at irregular intervals, linked to special indulgences for pilgrims who travel to Rome and visit the four major basilicas. The Holy Year of Mercy, proclaimed by Pope Francis with the bull Misericordiae Vultus for the period from 8 December 2015 to 20 November 2016, placed God's mercy at its centre — a theme programmatic for Francis's pontificate. Holy Doors opened in cathedrals around the world, millions of the faithful made pilgrimages to Rome, and the Church sought, through gestures of reconciliation and social emphasis, to convey a renewed pastoral stance.

Saint Martin of Tours, whose gesture of sharing his cloak with a freezing beggar near Amiens is one of the best-known icons of Christian charity, embodies precisely the active mercy that gave the Jubilee Year its theological foundation. Martin lived in the 4th century as a Roman officer and later Bishop of Tours; the biography written by Sulpicius Severus made him one of the most venerated saints of Western Christianity. The Vatican, as an independent microstate and centre of the world Church, honoured with its 2016 2-euro commemorative coin both the Extraordinary Holy Year and the timeless message tied to Martin's actions: mercy not as a feeling, but as a concrete act toward one's neighbour.