Appendix

"In order that the Christian faithful, amid this present bitterness of the times, may flee more fervently to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, continually render to Him homage of praise and reparation, and strive to implore divine mercy, petitions have more than once been presented to Our Most Holy Lord Pope Pius X that the following invocation might be added three times to the prayers which, by command of Leo XIII, of sacred memory, are customarily recited after the private celebration of Mass: Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us, with some Indulgence granted to the priest and to the others who devoutly recite it together with him.

"Now His Holiness, to whom, on account of the singular piety cultivated even from his earliest years, nothing is more important or more desirable than that the devotion of the nations toward the Most Holy Heart of Jesus, in which the treasures of all graces are hidden, should increase more and more each day, judged it most pleasing to assent to the petitions; and therefore he deigned graciously to grant to all of the Christian people who, together with the priest himself, after the private celebration of Mass, add the aforesaid invocation to the prayers already prescribed, an Indulgence of seven years and as many quarantines, applicable also to the departed. Anything whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding.

"Given at Rome, from the Secretariat of the Sacred Congregation placed over Indulgences and Sacred Relics, on 17 June 1904.

"1. Whether, for gaining the Indulgences, it suffices that the priest say only, 'Most Sacred Heart of Jesus,' and the people respond, 'Have mercy on us'? - 2. Whether the recitation of the same invocation, to be added to the prayers already prescribed after the celebration of Mass, is obligatory?

"Response. To 1. Affirmative. - To 2. Although an obligation properly so called was not imposed by the Supreme Pontiff, nevertheless the Most Blessed Father wills that provision be made for uniformity, and therefore that individual priests be exhorted to recite that invocation." Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, 16 August 1904.

A. M. D. G. - To the Greater Glory of God.