(OSV News) ─ When their bishop challenged them to perform 1 million acts of mercy and kindness during the 2025 Jubilee Year and document them on a public website, Catholics in the Diocese of St. Petersburg on Florida's Gulf Coast took him up on it -- and how.
Less than a year later, on Sept. 5, the feast of St. Teresa of Kolkata, St. Petersburg Bishop Gregory L. Parkes announced that his "1,000,000 Acts of Mercy Challenge" had exceeded its goal within the diocese and through acts of kindness sometimes extending far beyond its boundaries.
The challenge encouraged Catholics to go above and beyond traditional efforts to show kindness and compassion, according to organizers. Participants were asked to record all acts of service on the diocesan website with the hopes that they could collectively perform 1 million acts of mercy in one year.
"My heart is full of gratitude for all who have worked together to achieve this remarkable milestone that reflects our call to love as God loves and serve as Christ serves," said Bishop Parkes.
He announced the project's success during a radio broadcast Sept. 5 on 90.5 Spirit FM, a diocesan-owned radio station in Tampa Bay.
Proclaimed by Pope Francis, the Jubilee began on Christmas Eve 2024 with the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica and will conclude on Jan. 6, 2026.
The theme of the Holy Year is "Pilgrims of Hope." The papal bull, issued May 9, 2024, that introduced the coming Jubilee Year is titled "Spes Non Confundit," or "Hope does not disappoint," drawn from Romans 5:5.
"Everyone knows what it is to hope," Pope Francis wrote. "In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring."
Father Gary Dowsey, pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Trinity, told OSV News that his parishioners refocused and amplified a wide range of existing parish social and charitable projects in keeping with the Acts of Mercy Challenge.
"It heightened our responsibility to be missionaries of mercy and it reminded us of our central part of our discipleship that Christ has entrusted to our hands, although it is something we are doing all the time, and it enabled us to focus on what we are actually doing," Father Dowsey said.
The parish maintains a food pantry service three days a week and offers assistance to those needing help paying for utilities or cost of living expenses. It sent food and school supplies to migrant communities nearby and even supported a Society of St. Vincent de Paul charitable project in Haiti that Father Dowsey recommended.
"We are also very committed to San Jose Mission in Dover, Florida, and we know that migrant families have been in the news: we want to make sure they are being looked after and we offered school supplies at that mission so that they can go back to school and walk as tall as the other children," he said.
The people of St. Peter the Apostle Parish also helped other local parishes who are less fortunate.
"In our parish we don't have as many social needs as other areas around us so we help other parishes feed large numbers of parishes every week," the priest said. "We also help a local public school with 'pack-a-sack' lunches for vulnerable children with food they can take home for the weekend."
The challenge focused on 14 categories of service that the Catholic Church describes as corporal and spiritual works of mercy, which range from visiting the sick to "sheltering the homeless" to "comforting the afflicted."
According to the diocese, participants included 73 parishes, 35 schools, two mission churches and seven diocesan ministries.
Teresa Peterson, director of diocesan information and communications in St. Petersburg, said local Catholics shared their individual acts of kindness on the project website, including Catholic school students and youth groups focusing on helping migrant children but also people living in their own neighborhoods.
"One woman in Hernando County wrote about forgiving a relative who had wronged her for a long time and about how her prayers seeking reconciliation were answered; she wrote about bearing wrongs patiently," Peterson told OSV News, adding that project started in October last year and will continue to track Acts of Mercy through December.
"The Jubilee of Hope is what inspired all of this and we also launched a pastoral plan back in October because we knew the jubilee was starting," she said.
"It was a beautiful affirmation from God that we reached our goal on the feast of Mother Teresa," she added.
"Our (project) logo includes the blue and white stripes that you see in the (Missionaries of Charity) order," she said, "and it was intentional to connect this to St. Mother Theresa -- it feels like she has been right there with us this whole time."
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Tom Tracy writes for OSV News from Florida.
