Ten years ago this fall, a widow from Anaheim, California, phoned in to Catholic Answers Live, a call-in program where listeners put their questions to Roman Catholic apologists. Her husband had died two years before. That April, during the Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis, who led the Roman Catholic Church from 2013 until his death in 2025, she had sought a plenary indulgence on his behalf, and she had done every outward thing required. She went to confession. She received Communion. She prayed for the Pope and for the causes he had asked Roman Catholics to pray about. She walked through a holy door, a special church door opened only during a jubilee year for pilgrims seeking the indulgence. And she did one of the practical acts of kindness her church calls works of mercy, such as feeding the hungry or visiting the sick.

Then she asked the question that had clearly been sitting heavy on her heart. Had she brought his purification to an end, or was this only one step toward getting him out of purgatory?

The apologist who took her call, Karlo Broussard, was gentle with her. He told her he was sorry for her loss and promised to pray for her husband. He explained that in Roman Catholic teaching the essence of a plenary indulgence “is the remission of all temporal punishment due to sin.” And then he gave her the most honest answer his church allows: “Whether or not that plenary indulgence actually took effect for your husband in the afterlife, that’s something we don’t know definitively. Only God knows that.”

She thanked him. It helped, she said, because she was going to do another one that Saturday, for her mother, who had died twenty years earlier. His counsel to her was simple. “Don’t stop.”

I have not been able to shake that all in my mind. A grieving woman had taken every outward step her church asked of her, and at the end of it all, no one could tell her whether her husband was free. Her mother had been gone for two decades, and she was still working on her behalf.

A museum piece?

October is known as Reformation month in many Protestant circles. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther sent his Ninety-Five Theses to Archbishop Albert of Mainz, protesting the way indulgences were being preached, and the Reformation is usually dated from that day. That is why I am raising this subject now. The issues that were at stake then are still at stake today.

When I shared this clip on my blog in December 2016, I included these words from Dr. James White:

“Does theology matter? Specifically, the doctrine of justification as spelled out so clearly in the Reformation? I was directed to this clip from Catholic Answers Live this morning, and it very well illustrates the answer. I often explain indulgences to non-Roman Catholic audiences, and they just stare at me in amazement. Often I get the feeling that they are skeptical as well. ‘Sure, maybe Rome taught that hundreds of years ago, but today? No way!’ Well, indulgences are still very much a part of the Roman system. Here’s a brief clip proving the point….” (the link is found at the end of this article)

I have met that same skepticism many times. Most of us grew up thinking of indulgences as something from the history books, a sixteenth-century quarrel that quietly faded away. It did not fade away. Dr. White was right in 2016, and he is right today. That phone call was ten years ago, and the practice behind it is in full working order now.

Right now, Rome is in the middle of a special Year of Saint Francis, which runs from January 10, 2026 to January 10, 2027. It was proclaimed by the present pope, Leo XIV, and the Francis it honors is the thirteenth-century friar Francis of Assisi, who died in 1226. The year marks eight hundred years since his death. Throughout that year a plenary indulgence is offered to those who go to confession, receive Communion, pray for the Pope, and make a pilgrimage to a Franciscan church or one dedicated to Saint Francis, and it may be applied to the souls in purgatory.

In a little over three weeks, the calendar brings something more. From November 1 to November 8, the Church’s official handbook of indulgences grants a plenary indulgence, applicable only to the souls in purgatory, to anyone who devoutly visits a cemetery and prays for the dead. It is available on each of those eight days. On All Souls’ Day itself, which falls this year on Monday, November 2, a devout visit to a church with the Our Father and the Creed carries the same kind of grant. The Catechism of the Catholic Church still commends indulgences undertaken on behalf of the dead (paragraph 1032).

Some of our Roman Catholic neighbors here in the West Valley may visit cemeteries this November with that same hope, standing at a graveside and praying for someone they love. If you have Roman Catholic friends, they may be among them.

Why “only God knows”

Let me state Rome’s position fairly. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the people in purgatory died in God’s grace and are certain to reach heaven. It teaches that when a sin is forgiven, the guilt is removed, but a debt it calls “temporal punishment” can remain, to be cleared either in this life or by purification after death. An indulgence, in Rome’s teaching, draws on the merits of Christ and the saints to cancel part or all of that remaining debt. My disagreement is with that remaining debt.

Karlo Broussard was not being evasive. His answer is built into the rules themselves. When Pope Paul VI reorganized the practice in 1967, he set out the norms that still govern it. Beyond confession, Communion, and prayer for the Pope, a plenary indulgence requires “that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent.” If that inner disposition falls short in any way, the indulgence counts only as partial. And when an indulgence is offered for someone who has died, the same document treats it as an intercession, a request placed before God, rather than an act of authority over that soul.

Think about what that means. Who can certify that his own heart is free from every attachment to every sin? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). A widow can keep every outward condition and still never know whether the inward one was met. So she does it again. A plenary indulgence can be gained once a day, which means there is always tomorrow, and the day after that. The system has no finish line that anyone on earth can see.

I do not say any of this to mock her, or him. I say it because I grieve for her. She loved her husband, and she was doing everything she knew to do. What she needed was the one thing nobody on that call gave her: good news.

What the thief was told

There was once a dying man who had no time to do any of it. No confession to a priest, no Communion, no pilgrimage, no works of mercy. He was a criminal nailed to a cross, and all he could do was ask Jesus to remember him. And Jesus answered him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Today. Not after a process of unknown length, and not once enough prayers had been offered by the people he left behind. Paul expected the same of his own death: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23). He was not bracing for a waiting room. He was expecting Christ.

The reason is the cross. “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). The writer then quotes God’s own promise, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more,” and draws the conclusion: “Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:17-18). The Lord Jesus did not pay most of the debt and leave His people to settle the balance, in this life or the next. He paid all of it. That is why Paul can write, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Now. Not eventually. And when a believer dies, Christ completes the work of making him holy and brings him straight into His presence. Hebrews describes the saints in heaven as “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:23).

When a believer in Christ dies, we grieve. Of course we do. But we do not grieve “as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13), and we never have to wonder whether our loved one is out yet. He was never in. He went home.

This November

Two things for us, church family.

First, if you have buried someone who trusted in Christ, take this comfort to heart. You do not have to keep working on their behalf. There is nothing left for you to finish, because Christ finished it.

Second, keep that widow in mind as November comes. Please do not go looking for an argument with your Roman Catholic friends. Grieve with them. Listen to them. If a friend is grieving, you might ask, very gently, “May I show you what Jesus said to the dying thief beside Him?” Then let His words do the work. If a friend is ready to talk it through, you might ask, “Has anyone ever been able to tell you when it is finished?” and then tell them about the thief and the word Jesus spoke to him. Either way, a heart like hers does not need a debate. It needs a Savior who says “today.”

If you would like to see how this whole system was built, from the eleventh century to the present day, I traced it in an article called Forgiven, and Still in Debt.

And would you pray for that woman in Anaheim, wherever she is today?

She was told, “Only God knows.” But God has not kept silent. His Son spoke the decisive word from the cross, and it answers her question for every soul who rests in Him: “It is finished” (John 19:30). To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

For those who would like to hear the call for themselves, here is the brief Catholic Answers Live clip I shared on my blog in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvsFxpl1eg