St. Helen Catholic Church- Glasgow, KY & Our Lady of the Caves - Horse Cave / Facebook
A historic church in a southern Kentucky town where less than 1% of the population is Catholic is one of six designated churches in the state where pilgrims can obtain a plenary indulgence during the 2025 Year of Jubilee, according to a July 8 article in The Record, the Louisville archdiocese’s newspaper.
Built in 1893, the Church of Saint Helen in Glasgow, which is run by the Fathers of Mercy, has a “rough fieldstone exterior,” as described by Record journalist Olivia Castlen. Lifelong parishioner James Bastien explained that women who belonged to the parish gathered stones from nearby fields to build the church, where priests began having Mass after previously having to celebrate Masses in homes in town. Local resident Cora Preston Wood led several years of fundraising for construction of the church. Vibrant stained glass windows with the names of donors who supported the construction and a statue of St. Helen are among the features of the church, according to Castlen.
The Fathers of Mercy now celebrate four Masses on weekends, including one in Spanish, at the church, Castlen reported.
Louisville Archbishop Shelton Fabre decreed the church as one of the churches where Catholics can pilgrimage during 2025 and obtain an indulgence.
According to the decree, Catholics can obtain the Jubilee indulgence by attending Mass, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, Stations of the Cross, or the Rosary, among other ways, when visiting the designated pilgrimage sites. The other sites are in Louisville, Bardstown, Lebanon, and Loretto.
The faithful can also obtain the indulgence by visiting a Jubilee site, “and there, for a suitable period of time, engage in Eucharistic adoration and meditation, concluding with the Our Father, the Profession of Faith in any legitimate form, and invocations to Mary, the Mother of God, so that in this Holy Year everyone ‘will come to know the closeness of Mary, the most affectionate of mothers, who never abandons her children,’” Archbishop Fabre decreed, quoting the papal bull about the 2025 Jubilee Year, Spes non confundit.
