St. Patrick’s Day is set to fall on a Friday during Lent this year, and Catholics in the Diocese of St. Cloud will be able to celebrate the feast day with traditional fare, including corned beef and cabbage.
Bishop Patrick Neary, C.S.C., has granted Catholics in the diocese a dispensation from the obligation to abstain from meat on that day, Friday, March 17.
“This year the feast day of St. Patrick occurs on a Friday of Lent,” he said in an email to priests of the diocese. “In honor of my patron saint and to recognize that day as meaningful to so many Catholics of Irish heritage as well as all other Catholics, I am dispensing all Catholics in the Diocese of Saint Cloud from the obligation to abstain from meat on Friday, March 17, 2023.”
Canon 87 of the Latin Church’s Code of Canon Law states that a diocesan bishop “is able to dispense the faithful (of his diocese) from universal and particular disciplinary laws” of the church.