Fulgens corona
First Marian year
First Marian year
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In September 1953, [Pope Pius XII](/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII "Pope Pius XII") inaugurated the Roman Catholic Church's First Marian Year, or "Little Holy Year," devoted to the Virgin Mary who had always been the object of his special veneration. He announced the Marian Year in his encyclical letter *Fulgens corona*. The Marian year, the first in Church history, ran from December 1953 to December 1954,[Koo, Samuel. "Marian Year Called Return to Tradition", *The Washington Post*, February 21, 1987](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1987/02/21/marian-year-called-return-to-tradition/60060152-4c5f-4ef6-b41e-15223cff0487/) Hundreds of thousands of Romans lined the route of the papal cortege when Pius XII, in one of his rare appearances in the streets of Rome, went to the Basilica of St. Mary Major to open the Marian Year on 8 December 1953, the 99th anniversary of the proclaiming of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary by Pope Pius IX.

Pius XII begins by recalling his predecessor, [Pope Pius IX](/wiki/Pope_Pius_IX "Pope Pius IX"), who with "apostolic authority defined, pronounced and solemnly sanctioned "that the doctrine, which holds that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary at the first moment of her conception was, by singular grace and privilege of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the Human race, preserved from all stains of original sin, is revealed by God, and therefore to be firmly and resolutely believed by all the faithful." (Dogmatic bull *[Ineffabilis Deus](/wiki/Ineffabilis_Deus "Ineffabilis Deus")*, of Dec. 8, 1854\.)"[Pope Pius XII, *Fulgens corona*, September 8, 1953, §1, Libreria Editrice Vaticana](https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_08091953_fulgens-corona.html)

The celebration also acknowledged the 1950 declaration of the [Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven](/wiki/Assumption_of_the_Virgin_Mary_into_Heaven "Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven"). [Pope Pius XII](/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII "Pope Pius XII") links the solemn definition of the [Immaculate Conception](/wiki/Immaculate_Conception "Immaculate Conception") with the [dogma](/wiki/Dogma "Dogma") of the Assumption Mary, promulgated in Pius's  *apostolic constitution [Munificentissimus Deus](/wiki/Munificentissimus_Deus "Munificentissimus Deus")*AAS, 42: 754 of November 1, 1950\. To Pius, the two doctrines are complementary.[Perry, Tim and Kendall, Daniel. *The Blessed Virgin Mary*, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2013, p. 62](https://books.google.com/books?id=LhkyNgZAi14C&dq=Fulgens+corona&pg=PA62)


How did the First Marian Year affect the Catholic Church?