The Vatican announced that, for the 2025 Jubilee year — the Jubilee of Hope — five “Holy Doors” will be opened, beginning on Christmas Eve, as Pope Francis opens the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Holy Door must be extraordinarily important if the Holy Father, the successor of St. Peter, opens it.

So what is a Holy Door? Where did its designation come from? What significance does it have?

What the Popes Have Said

Pope Francis and St. John Paul II have explained the tradition in official documents.

“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,” explained Pope Francis in Spes Non Confundit (Hope Does Not Disappoint), the papal bull officially proclaiming the Holy Year of 2025.

A quarter of a century earlier, St. John Paul II wrote of the Holy Door in Incarnationis Mysterium, his bull of indiction of the Great Jubilee, explaining how it “evokes the passage from sin to grace which every Christian is called to accomplish. Jesus said: ‘I am the door’ (John 10:7), in order to make it clear that no one can come to the Father except through him. This designation which Jesus applies to himself testifies to the fact that he alone is the Savior sent by the Father. There is only one way that opens wide the entrance into the life of communion with God: this is Jesus, the one and absolute way to salvation. To him alone can the words of the Psalmist be applied in full truth: ‘This is the door of the Lord where the just may enter’ (Psalm 118:20).”

John Paul II adds that it is the responsibility of every believer to cross the threshold of this “door.” Why? “To pass through that door means to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; it is to strengthen faith in him in order to live the new life which he has given us. It is a decision which presumes freedom to choose and also the courage to leave something behind, in the knowledge that what is gained is divine life (Matthew 13:44-46).”

He also acknowledged that this was the spirit he was going to have as he, the Holy Father, was to be the first to pass through the Holy Door. “Through the holy door … Christ will lead us more deeply into the Church, his Body and his Bride.”

In Scripture

Over the years, other official references point to scriptural explanations outlining the importance of the Holy Door via Jesus’ messages and titles.

• “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Luke 11:9).
• “I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me” (Revelation 3:20).
• “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved” (John 10:9).

An explanation from St. Peter’s Basilica affirms that the Holy Door represents “Jesus, the Good Shepherd and the gate of the sheep pen: ‘I am the gate. Whoever enters through me, will be safe. He will go in and out, and find pasture’ (John 10:9).” Consequently, “The message imparted by the Holy Door is that God’s mercy reaches out to mankind’s frailty.”

Holy Door History

The Holy Door is sometimes extended to Rome’s other three major basilicas, as it will be for the 2025 Jubilee when there will be Holy Doors opened at the papal basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major and St. Paul Outside the Walls. Pope Francis will open all of them.

At first, all four doors were not opened. For the Great Jubilee in 2000, the Vatican shared some history.

Although Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated the “Holy Year” tradition, called a “Jubilee,” in 1300, it was not until over a century later that the Holy Door played an integral role. According to 15th-century documents, in 1423, at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Pope Martin V opened the Holy Door for the first time in the history of the Jubilee. Holy Years were celebrated every 33 years at that time, in commemoration of the years Jesus lived on earth.

It was not until Christmas 1499 that Pope Alexander VI requested the Holy Door be opened not only at St. John Lateran but also in St. Peter’s, St. Mary Major and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.

Jubilee Years when the Holy Door is opened now occur every 25 years. The Pope can proclaim a Holy or Jubilee Year at another time also, such as happened in 1933 on the anniversary of Jesus’ death on the cross and in 2000 at the turn of the millennium.

Rituals

The ritual for opening the Holy Door was nearly unchanged between 1525 and 1950. Then slight changes began to appear post-1950: In the early centuries, the Holy Father would strike the brick wall enclosing the Holy Door with a silver hammer; then masons would continue to uncover the door that, at the end of each Holy Year, was sealed again in by a brick wall as the pope closed the year. Then the 1975 Holy Year refocused attention on the door and not the wall. By this time, the Holy Door at St. Peter’s had been completed with sculpted bronze panels. Later, for the 2000 Jubilee, the Vatican master of papal liturgical celebrations explained these were of “profound biblical, theological, liturgical and pastoral significance attached to the door in salvation history and in the history of the Church; it thus becomes one of the most powerful signs of the Jubilee, as the Pope [John Paul II] pointed out.”

These new elements “better express the biblical and liturgical significance of the Holy Door.” Thus, the panels on the front of the door are visible; but, inside, the back of the door is bricked up until the next Holy Year, when the bricks will be removed, the door pushed open by the Holy Father, and pilgrims again walk through it.

Panels Proclaim Meaning

The guide to St. Peter’s Basilica from the Vatican explains the Holy Door’s 16 rectangular panels symmetrically lined in four rows of four panels each. They are divided by the coat of arms of 36 popes who have celebrated the ordinary Holy Years. The bronze bas-relief panels depict the following scenes from the Bible: The Angel at the Gates of Paradise, the Fall, Mary at the Annunciation, the Angel of the Annunciation, Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan, the Lost Sheep, the Merciful Father, the Cure of a Paralytic, the Woman Washing Jesus’ Feet, the Need for Forgiveness (7 times 77), Peter’s Denial, the Good Thief, Jesus’ Appearance to Thomas, Christ’s Appearance to the Disciples, the Conversion of Saul, and Opening the Holy Door.

“The message the Holy Door gives to those who, after reflecting before it, cross the threshold and enter the Basilica, is part of the essence of the Gospel: it is the message of God’s mercy bending over man’s misery,” wrote the late Italian Cardinal Virgilio Noè, archpriest emeritus of the Vatican basilica, in his book The Holy Door in St. Peter’s. The “sixteen panels of the door are like the verses of a hymn, which sing of God’s infinite mercy,” the cardinal explained. “They start from the reality of sin, which degrades man, and move to penance, which rehabilitates him. They enlighten every moment of any situation with the certainty of divine forgiveness.”

In addition, the master of papal liturgical celebrations has explained how the prayer before opening the door comes from Luke’s Gospel when Jesus proclaims in the Nazareth synagogue: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has sent me ... to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.” It “clearly links the Jubilee year to the mystery of Christ made present in the time of the Church.”

For this year, Pope Francis also explained, “For everyone, may the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the ‘door’ (cf. John 10:7-9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as ‘our hope’ (1 Timothy 1:1).”