On September 1, Pope Francis released a new set of pastoral guidelines for the Year of Mercy, which starts December 8 and ends November 20, 2016.

During this time, priests, in addition to bishops, will be allowed to provide absolution for women who have had an abortion, Catholic News Service reported. But the article quoted Don Clemmer, inter-im director of media relations for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, as saying that “the faculty for the priest to lift the ‘latae sententiae’ excommunication for abortion is almost universally granted in North America.”

The pope’s phrasing struck a compassionate note with statements like: “I think in particular of all the women who have resorted to abortion. I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal.”

Nicholas Cafardi, a professor of law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, told the Wall Street Journal that the move was symbolically important. “The pastoral value is the message to priests to be welcoming in the confessional when these sins are confessed,” he said, so that when people “do approach the church for forgiveness, they won’t be treated in a way that would make them wish they hadn’t come.”

Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, said, “Catholic women know that they can in good conscience disagree with the hierarchy and still be good Catholics in good faith…. Nevertheless, as an overall gesture that evokes images of sitting down with women and listening to them, this is a symbol that could be considered a very good one.”