Introduzione

[Autom. eng. transl.] This volume presents the main results of an original sociological research on the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, the Holy Year announced by Pope Francis in the spring of 2015. The Jubilee was significantly different from those that preceded it since the times of the Middle Ages in virtue of two relevant aspects: the geographical location as a dimension not only physical but also symbolic, with attention to the even existential peripheries of contemporaneity and, secondly, due to its distinctly social nature, being dedicated to the theme of mercy. To study this event an innovative approach was therefore needed, more attentive to how the Church but also the faithful lived the Jubilee: on the one hand, a local Church that in all its most remote corners, even in the deep Lombard province, was forced to take on the organizational and creative burden of the event; on the other, the need to express the solidarity vocation of the Jubilee in a very concrete way. The research, conducted by scholars from the University of Bologna and the Catholic University of Milan, has used various tools of qualitative and quantitative research to explore in a profound way the Jubilee experience by its protagonists.