SABATINO, PRIVILEGIO. – It is based on the apparition and promise of the Blessed Virgin to free the souls of the confraternity members of Carmel from Purgatory on the Saturday after their death. The conditions of the privilege are as follows: for religious, perseverance in the Order; for confraternity members affiliated with it, wearing the “sign of the holy habit” (taken literally: the cope, but in practice the scapular), observing chastity according to one’s state in life, and reciting the Little Office of Our Lady or, if unable to do so, abstaining from meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays; this last condition may be commuted by priests possessing the requisite faculty through the recitation of seven Pater, Ave. Gloria.
The apparition and privilege are set forth in the so-called “Sabbatine Bull” of John XXII, Sacratissimo uti culmine (1322), known through a transcript in the confirmatory bull of Alexander V (1409), authenticated in 1421 and subsequently inserted into Clement VII’s bull Ex clementi (1530).
The decree of the Holy Office of 11 February 1613 clarified: “The Carmelite Fathers are permitted to preach that the Christian people may piously believe ... that the Blessed Virgin will help the souls of the friars and confraternity members after their passing ... through her continual intercessions, suffrages, merits, and special protection, especially on Saturday, which the Church dedicates to the same Virgin ... .” The most recent popes, too, have repeatedly recalled the Sabbatine privilege, most recently Pius XII in the commemorative letter for the seventh centenary of the vision of St. Simone Stock (11 February 1950).
However, the material authenticity of the bull of John XXII has been strongly contested, both because it is not contained in the official Register and because of the text’s insufficiently curial and somewhat peculiar wording. In the present state of the documentation, the devotion is found to be fully developed in the second half of the fifteenth century.