Quite a few of you have told me you liked Elena’s pilgrimage to Santiago in the Web of May 1st. Thought some have been disturbed by my mentioning the ‘plenary indulgence’ as though it were important for me, without realising I was mentioning it with a touch of humour, precisely to rest it importance. Indulgences have always created trouble since Luther who saw how churches in Rome were built with money raised by auctioning indulgences. In our novitiate there was once a discussion because a novice asked innocently what was the meaning of the phrase ‘Indulgence of seven years and seven Lents’ attached to some prayers, and he said it without any malice, simply to find out what it really meant, and those around smiled, while the other novice took it ill as an offence against faith and protested in earnest: ‘Seven years and seven Lents is half fourteen years and fourteen Lents, and double three and a half. And if you don’t respect these sacred things, you’ll pay for it in purgatory. And no indulgences will avail you.’ We laughed all the more, of course. It has always seemed strange to me that someone, who finds a prayer with a plenary indulgence attached and says it in his deathbed escapes purgatory, while any other good person in any corner of the world in any other culture or religion dies without any such help and has to endure purgatory without remission. As the official version goes. Not my version, anyhow. Excuse me, please.