It’s beginning to look a lot like a Jubilee, as the Vatican and Rome rush to put the final touches on preparations before Pope Francis will break open the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 24.

The city of Rome has invested more than 4.8 billion euros ($5 billion) in more than 600 projects to prepare the Eternal City for a year expected to draw 32 million visitors. But with the majority of work still unfinished, and 2025 on the doorstep, the sounds of construction may mix with Christmas carols.

In addition to several massive restoration projects — such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s bronze baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica, newly unveiled — the Vatican has planned a calendar bursting with spiritual, cultural and artistic events for the more-than-700-year-old tradition linked to special graces for pilgrims.

Some of the biggest events of the Jubilee of Hope will be the canonizations of Blessed Carlo Acutis, during the Jubilee of Teenagers on April 27, and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, during the Jubilee of Young People on April 3, and the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents, and the Elderly, on the weekend of May 30-June 1.

Priests, religious, artists, athletes and Catholic influencers, among others, will also have special Jubilee events. Everything will conclude during the Christmas season 2025.

 

Theme of Hope

For the first ordinary jubilee since the Great Jubilee of 2000, Pope Francis has chosen the theme of hope, a virtue that “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,” the Pontiff said in his “papal bull” proclamation of the Holy Year.

The goal of the Jubilee “is to give an experience of the mercy and love of God,” the Vatican’s chief Jubilee organizer, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, told EWTN News in May. “I hope that all pilgrims coming to Rome or celebrating the Jubilee in their own local Church can have this kind of experience: God loves me.”

 

Holy Doors

Jubilees have biblical roots, as the Mosaic era established jubilee years to be held every 50 years for the freeing of slaves and forgiveness of debts as manifestations of God’s mercy.

The practice was reestablished in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII, who, inspired by his predecessor Pope Celestine V’s “Jubilee” in L’Aquila six years prior, issued a bull of indulgence proclaiming that Christians who confessed their sins, received the Eucharist, and made a pilgrimage to Rome could receive a plenary indulgence — a grace granted by the Catholic Church through the merits of Jesus Christ to remove the temporal punishment due to sin.

The Holy Door is one of the essential parts of a jubilee year. The special doors, found at St. Peter’s Basilica and Rome’s three other papal basilicas, are sealed from the inside and only opened to walk through during the holy year.

Pope Francis himself will open two of the holy doors for the 2025 Jubilee, starting with St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 24, following the Christmas Eve Mass.

“The door has a symbolic meaning,” Church historian and Jesuit Father Roberto Regoli told EWTN News. “Christ presents himself as the gate to heaven. ... He is the only Savior of the world, and to go through that [holy] door is to enter into this mystery of Christ [the gate of heaven], who brings us eternal salvation.”

The Church has decreed that one of several ways a Catholic can receive the special grace known as a plenary indulgence during the Jubilee Year 2025 is by making a pilgrimage to at least one of the four major papal basilicas: St. Peter’s, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major or St. Paul Outside the Walls.

For those unable to travel to Italy, the Church has said a Jubilee Year plenary indulgence can also be obtained in 2025 by praying, fasting, making a donation, or performing a work of mercy — always under the usual conditions of detachment from all sin, sacramental confession, Holy Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Pope.

Archbishop Fisichella, who leads the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, explained that being “pilgrims of hope” is a timely message, because “people today need hope,” an essential element of evangelization.

The wealth of artistic and cultural events to take place, Archbishop Fisichella said, are also “to express, once again, that music, painting, literature, everything can be an expression of faith, and they can challenge you to [have] a spiritual experience.”

“For everyone, may the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the ‘door’ of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as ‘our hope,’” Pope Francis wrote in Spes Non Confundit, the “bull of indiction” formally announcing the Holy Year.

Wishing for the 2025 Jubilee to be a source of hope for those in hardship, Pope Francis decided to also establish, for the first time, a Holy Door in a Roman prison.

The Holy Father will open the Holy Door — the main entrance to Rebibbia Prison’s chapel — on the feast of St. Stephen on Dec. 26.

The commander of the Penitentiary Police for Rebibbia, Sarah Brunetti, told EWTN News in early December that the prison was “preparing with joy” for the Jubilee and “the immense gift” of a Holy Door at the prison.

The Holy Door, she said, “is a gift of hope that is given to all of humanity and particularly to the humanity that lives in this prison environment.”

 

Pilgrim Experience

Among the Jubilee pilgrims expected in Rome next year, an estimated 2.5 million will come from the United States, Archbishop Fisichella said.

“A Jubilee is a special occasion, because it is not traditional tourism,” Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, said in an interview with EWTN News earlier this year. “But, naturally, at the same time, [those who visit will] admire the beauty of Rome.”

To help Jubilee visitors find their way to the countless number of faith-filled sites in Rome — and to uncover many of the city’s hidden gems — EWTN News has developed the EWTN Travel Jubilee App, available for iPhone and Android.

Using their phone’s GPS technology, tourists can become pilgrims as they navigate the ancient streets of the Eternal City while learning more about its Christian history.

Joseph Long, the founder and managing director of Catholic pilgrimage company ProRome, told CNA he has seen “a huge increase in demand [for pilgrimages] due to the 2025 Jubilee.”

His company is organizing nearly double the number of trips to Rome for the 2025 Jubilee Year — 40 instead of the 24 they planned and operated in 2024.

Long said some of the most common requests from pilgrims are to attend a papal audience and to visit the Holy Doors at St. Peter’s Basilica and the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

EWTN’s Joan Lewis, author of A Holy Year in Rome: The Complete Pilgrim’s Guide for the Jubilee of Mercy and an experienced Jubilee attendee, told CNA in 2023 that Jubilee pilgrims should “be prepared for crowds. Bring patience along with your comfiest walking shoes.”

Lewis, who participated in the Jubilees of 1983, 1987, 2000 and 2016, noted that if people can plan their visit in nonpeak times it could be helpful, but to be prepared for throngs regardless.

“If they can choose ‘the road less traveled’ that will probably augment their appreciation,” she said, noting that the busiest times will probably be holidays, the summer break, and the openings and closings of the Holy Doors. 

Despite the many challenges to organizing an event of this scale, Archbishop Fisichella reassured that the Vatican and Rome will be “ready to give the best welcome to everybody.”

“The Jubilee is an extraordinary moment because you have a jubilee every 25 years,” he said, so it is a blessing if the Jubilee “will be able to challenge you to understand more and more that you are in the presence of God, who loves you and never abandons you, even in the moments you are suffering, you are in doubt, or you feel yourself alone.”

“Let us even now be drawn to this hope!” Pope Francis said in the Jubilee Bull of Indiction. “Through our witness, may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: ‘Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord!’ (Psalm 27:14).”

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