One of the great Catholic moments of the 21st century occurred on Sunday, when Pope Francis pressed his hands against the holy door of Bangui cathedral in the Central African Republic. After a mighty push, the doors swung open, leaving the Pontiff standing with his arms outstretched. The Year of Mercy officially starts on December 8 in Rome – but the Year effectively began on Sunday in a war-wracked, impoverished nation few of us could place on a map. The image of Francis opening the holy door in Bangui was as potent as that of John Paul II standing on the threshold of the holy door in St Peter’s Basilica on December 24, 1999. The Polish pope was inaugurating the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. We must hope and pray that the Year of Mercy will touch as many lives as that momentous Year. The new Jubilee Year is one of the most inspired initiatives of this papacy. It expresses Francis’s desire for a revolution – not in the content of the Catholic faith, but in the way that Catholics reach out to the world. As he said after opening the holy door in Bangui: “Those who evangelise must ... be first and foremost practitioners of forgiveness, specialists in reconciliation, experts in mercy.” While the Church has always preached mercy, the world has not always heard the message. After the Enlightenment, there was a tendency to downplay the supernatural and reduce Christianity to an ethical code. This was disastrous, as Christianity came to be seen as the preserve of a kind of ethical elite, rather than what it truly was: a refuge for sinners.