2025 Jubilee Year offers opportunities for pilgrimages, works of mercy and forgiveness
Christians must “abound in hope” to be credible witnesses of God’s love, Pope Francis wrote in the document announcing the Jubilee Year of Hope for 2025.
On May 9, the pope issued “Spes Non Confudit (Hope does not disappoint),” the bull of induction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025. The Jubilee Year of Hope will begin on Dec. 24, 2024, with the opening of the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, and continue until the closing of the Jubilee Year on Jan. 6, 2026.
“Hope is born of love and based on the love springing from the pierced heart of Jesus upon the cross,” Pope Francis wrote in the document.
In a world seemingly marked by war, divisions, environmental destruction and economic challenges, hope can seem hard to come by, he said. But “Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love.”
What is a Jubilee Year?
A Jubilee Year is “a special gift of grace, characterized by the forgiveness of sins and in particular by the indulgence, which is a full expression of the mercy of God,” Pope Francis wrote.
While the idea of Jubilee has roots as far back as the Old Testament, Pope Boniface VIII called the first Jubilee Year in 1300. At first, Jubilee Years were planned for every 100 years; in 1343, Pope Clement VI reduced the gap to 50 years, and in 1470, Pope Paul II changed it to every 25 years, according to the Vatican’s Jubilee website.
The most recent “ordinary Jubilee” was held in 2000. But in 2015, Pope Francis declared an “extraordinary Jubilee,” proclaiming the Year of Mercy.
Throughout the centuries, Jubilee Years have been enriched by three signs which attest to the mercy of God, the redemption by Christ and which foster the faith and devotion of the Christian people: pilgrimage, Holy Doors and the Jubilee Indulgence.
Pilgrimages
The faithful will be able to obtain a Jubilee Indulgence if they undertake a pious pilgrimage to any sacred Jubilee site:
• by participation in Holy Mass or another liturgical service such as Morning or Evening Prayer or acts of piety such as Stations of the Cross, praying the Rosary or visits to the Blessed Sacrament;
• and there, for a suitable period of time, engage in eucharistic adoration and meditation, concluding with the Our Father, the Profession of Faith from Mass and a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In the course of the Jubilee Year, the faithful are invited to make pious pilgrimages to one or more local churches that have been designated by Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski as local sacred Jubilee sites.
The faithful who cannot participate in various solemn celebrations, pilgrimages and pious visits for serious reasons can obtain the Jubilee Indulgence if united in spirit with the faithful taking part in person. They must recite the Our Father, the Profession of Faith and other prayers in conformity with the objectives of the Holy Year in their homes or wherever they are confined, offering up their sufferings or the hardships of their lives.
Designated Pilgrimage Sites in the Archdiocese of St. Louis
The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis | St. Louis
Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France | St. Louis
Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters | St. Louis
The Carmel of Saint Joseph | St. Louis
Saint Mary’s of the Barrens – National Shrine of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal | Perryville
Monastery of Saint Clare | St. Louis
Passionist Nuns of St. Louis | Ellisville
Immaculate Heart of Mary | New Melle
Immaculate Conception | Union
>> Holy Doors
While bishops around the world are asked to designate their cathedrals or other significant churches as special places of pilgrimage and prayer for the Holy Year 2025, the Vatican is not asking them to dedicate and open a Holy Door at those churches.
In Catholic tradition, the Holy Door represents the passage to salvation — the path to a new and eternal life, which was opened to humanity by Jesus.
The tradition goes back more than 600 years. Pope Martin V in 1423 opened the Holy Door in the Basilica of St. John Lateran — the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome — for the first time for a Jubilee. Later, Pope Alexander VI had Holy Doors opened at the four main basilicas in Rome for the Holy Year of 1500.
The doors are formally closed at the end of a Holy Year and then bricked up by masons.
Pope Francis will open the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 24 and at St. John Lateran Dec. 29. The Holy Door at St. Mary Major will be opened Jan. 1, and at St. Paul Outside the Walls Jan. 5.
On Dec. 26, the pope will visit Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome to open a Holy Door as a “tangible sign of the message of the hope” for people in prisons around the world.
Jubilee Indulgence and Works of Mercy and Penance
In a special way “during the Holy Year, we are called to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind,” Pope Francis wrote. The faithful will also be able to obtain the Jubilee Indulgence if, along with the usual conditions, they participate in works of mercy and penance:
• Visiting, for an appropriate amount of time, their brothers and sisters who are in need or in difficulty (such as those who are sick, in prison, lonely, elderly or disabled), in a sense “making a pilgrimage to Christ present in them”
• Through initiatives that put into practice, in a concrete and generous way, the spirit of penance. In particular, the penitential nature of Friday can be rediscovered by abstaining from “futile distractions” like social media or from “superfluous consumption” by not eating meat, for example, or by donating a proportionate sum of money to the poor.
• Supporting works of a “religious or social nature, especially in support of the defense and protection of life in all its phases,” supporting young people in need, lonely or elderly people or migrants, or dedicating a reasonable portion of one’s free time to voluntary activities that are “of service to the community.”
Conditions for Indulgence
An indulgence is “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1471). “An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin. The faithful can gain indulgences for themselves or apply them to the dead.”
The Jubilee Indulgence is a plenary indulgence. The Church’s usual conditions for gaining an indulgence apply in connection with the Jubilee Indulgence.
The usual conditions are:
• Be in a state of grace and have the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin
• Sacramental confession
• Reception of holy Communion
• Prayer for the pope’s intentions
Despite the rule that only one plenary indulgence can be obtained per day, the faithful who have carried out an act of charity on behalf of the souls in Purgatory, if they receive Holy Communion a second time that day, can obtain the plenary indulgence twice on the same day, applicable only to the deceased (this must take place within a Eucharistic celebration).
The Jubilee Prayer
Father in heaven,
may the faith you have gifted us in
your son Jesus Christ, our brother,
and the flame of charity
kindled in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,
reawaken in us, the blessed hope
for the coming of your Kingdom.
May your grace transform us
into diligent cultivators of the evangelical seeds
that make humanity and the cosmos rise
unto the confident expectation
of the new heavens and the new earth,
when with the powers of Evil overcome,
your glory shall be manifested eternally.
May the grace of the Jubilee
reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope,
the yearning for heavenly treasures
and pour over all the earth
the joy and peace
of our Redeemer.
To you God blessed in eternity,
be praise and glory for ever and ever.
Amen.
>> Learn more about the Jubilee Year
Vatican website: www.iubilaeum2025.va/en.html
USCCB site: www.usccb.org/committees/jubilee-2025
Archdiocesan website: archstl.org/2025jubileeyear
Read “Spes Non Confundit,” Pope Francis’ papal bull of induction for the Jubilee Year 2025: stlreview.com/49shb5y
Jubilee Mass
Bishop Mark S. Rivituso will celebration Mass as the solemn opening of the Jubilee at 10 a.m. Dec. 29 at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. The Jubilee will conclude locally on Dec. 28, 2025.
