If you’ve ever been inside the front lobby (narthex) area of Holy Family Church in Stanley, chances are you might have noticed a framed document with some rather exquisitely detailed artistry and a non-English text for its main body—Latin, that is. But while the words “ecclesia sanctae Annae sacra” penned on it might tell the historically aware that it has something to do with the old St. Anne’s church once on the south side and then merged with St. Mary’s in the late 1970s to form the present Holy Family congregation, the rest of it might as well be Greek. What for instance, is one to make of “Non sine mirabili Dei Providentia,” to start the first paragraph out, or else “Cum itaque Nobis renuntiam fuerit,” between the first and second paragraphs, or even “Datum Romae, ad Sancti Alfonsi die 11 mensis August 1938” to close out the upper portion? The last one is evidently daterelated, but “Datum” or “itaque”? How is one supposed to read this stuff, or what’s it talking about?

As it turns out, the document in question is talking about a full as well as a partial indulgence related to membership in a religious society dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Alphonsus Maria de Ligouri, and of an image kept at Rome that was thought lost, but then found, after Napoleon (who was at least officially Catholic, being Corsican), felt it necessary to humble the Pope and Rome by destroying some churches when he stormed through.

We got that last bit from Wikipedia and other online sources, not as a shot in the dark, but after trying to read the document from some bits and pieces of what it says. As it turns out, the framed Latin document also points to or suggests another local parish treasure and reproduction of the image in question, but first the indulgence conditions.

In the first place and more generally, there is no lawful buying or selling whatsoever of indulgences today in the Catholic Church—the practice was outlawed in 1562 at the Council of Trent, after attempts at reform of the practice by unscrupulous preachers were deemed to be “hopeless.” Thus, the very attempt to buy or else sell an indulgence in the Catholic Church today, renders it void. But that being said, the principle behind indulgences remains, which in simple English is the idea that the church’s pastors can either impose or else remit certain things in matters of faith, generally sins (for remission), and penance (for imposition). So what’s the document say anyway? After all, it’s not every day you find such an exquisite detailed and decoratively enhanced Latin text. Clearly it was deemed important by and for past generations. We’ll start off with the translated title rendered in English.

“Letter of Gathering to the Archsodality (religious society), under the title and invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Perpetual Help and St. Alphonsus Maria de Ligouri, in the Church of Saint Alphonsus, canonically erected (i.e. by church law) at Rome.” The Virgin Mary should be familiar to Christians in general, but who was St. Alphonsus Maria de Ligouri?

As it turns out from an internet search he was an Italian lawyer turned priest, bishop, and moral theologian of the 18th century, founder of the Redemptorists (a society that worked in poor and rural areas), fighter of Jansenism (a stern approach to grace and the Sacraments which kept people from receiving the Eucharist out of fear), and a sufferer of scruples before his death in 1787, being officially declared a canonized saint (model of virtue) in 1839 by the thenreigning Pope. So what’s the rest about? An icon once thought lost and then found, being saved at the last minute from French Emperor Napoleon’s outrages. We read on in translation: “Not without the wonders of Divine Providence was the Image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, clearly miraculous (miraculis clara), under the title of Perpetual Help formerly (kept) for three centuries in the shrine (templo) of St. Matthew at Rome, by holy devotion and then after a long time brought out of oblivion…by the command of the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX (pope from 1846-1878) reclaimed for public veneration…” The rest of the document relates how the same image was installed in the Redemptorist church of St. Alphonsus de Ligouri at Rome and then spread through the world by means of a religious society or “Archsodality,” including to Stanley, Wisconsin in reproduction, as it so happens. The conditions for an indulgence related to membership in the society and the meeting of certain (non-monetary) conditions such as prayer, penance, communion and visiting churches are detailed in the document’s lower portion. But of the image as it exists presently? All indications point to a mounted icon on the east wall of Holy Family Hall, just down the street on Third Avenue. Records are sparse, but in 1938 shortly after the date of the document signing, two trips appear in the local newspaper that could have brought the icon back to Stanley.