Reconciliation Within the Church Exhortation of Pope Paul VI on reconciliation within the Church December 8, 1974 Venerable brothers and dear sons and daughters: health and the apostolic blessing With affection, confidence and hope we turn to all of you, our brothers in the Episcopate, the beloved members of the clergy and Religious Families and the Catholic laity. We do so just before the celebration of the Holy Year in Rome at the Basilicas of the Apostles, now that you have already celebrated the Jubilee in the local Churches with piety and with harmony of sentiments and resolves. It is a moment of great importance for the entire world, which is looking to the Church, but principally so for the sons and daughters of the Church herself—those who are aware of the riches of her mystery of holiness and grace, which the recent Council has opportunely shed light upon. And therefore we address ourself to them with a cordial invitation to charity and to mutual union in the spirit of reconciliation proper to the Holy Year, in the bond of the one love of Christ. In fact, from the moment in which on 9 May 1973 we manifested our decision to celebrate the Holy Year in 1975, we likewise manifested the primary goal of this spiritual and penitential celebration. This goal was to be reconciliation, founded on conversion to God and the interior renewal of man, and which would heal the rifts and disorders