Vatican City, Dec 24, 2024 / 14:10 pm

Pope Francis opened the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica before Mass on Christmas Eve, officially launching the Jubilee Year 2025.

“O Christ, bright star of the morning, incarnation of infinite love, long awaited salvation, sole hope of the world, illumine our hearts with your radiant splendor,” the pope prayed on Dec. 24, during the rite of opening of the Holy Door, which was preceded by readings from the Old and New Testaments, the singing of the O Antiphons, and the proclamation of Christmas.

“In this season of grace and reconciliation grant that we may put our trust in your mercy alone and discover once more the way that leads to the Father,” Francis continued. “Open our souls to the working of the Holy Spirit, that he may soften the hardness of our hearts, that enemies may speak to each other again, adversaries may join hands, and peoples seek to meet together.”

The rite to open the Holy Door — sealed since the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016 — included the proclamation of a passage from the Gospel of John, in which Jesus says: “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Seated in his wheelchair, the 88-year-old Pope Francis leaned forward to knock on the gold Holy Door. As assistants opened the two sides of the door, the choir sang in Latin: “This is the Lord’s own gate. Where the upright enter. I enter your house, O Lord.”

After breaking open the special door, Francis stopped at the threshold to pray briefly in silence as the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica pealed out into the cool Rome night.

The pope passed through the Holy Door into the basilica followed by cardinals, bishops, priests, and ministers for Christmas Mass, as well as representatives of other Christian churches and Catholics from five continents wearing traditional clothing from their countries. The choir sang the Jubilee hymn, “Pilgrims of Hope.”

While symptoms of a cold kept the pope indoors on the weekend before Christmas, he was well enough on Tuesday to open the Holy Door and preside over Mass during the Night for the Nativity of the Lord. It was also one of Francis’ first public appearances sporting hearing aids.

The first ordinary jubilee since the Great Jubilee of 2000 is on 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,” Pope Francis said in Spes Non Confundit, the “bull of indiction” formally announcing the Holy Year.

“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,’” he wrote.

The Jubilee, a year filled with special spiritual, artistic, and cultural events in Rome, will conclude during the Christmas season 2025. An important part of the Jubilee is the opportunity to 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.

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 August 3, and the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents, and the Elderly, on the weekend of May 30-June 1.

Pope Francis will also open a Holy Door in Rome’s Rebibbia Prison on the feast of St. Stephen on Dec. 26.

Editor’s Note: The Archdiocese of Cincinnati will have three pilgrimage sites during the jubilee year:

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains in Downtown Cincinnati; 325 W Eighth St., Cincinnati 45202  Map!

The Shrine of the Holy Relics at Maria Stein: 2291 St. Johns Rd., Maria Stein 45860 Map!

Emmanuel Catholic Church in Dayton, 149 Franklin St., Dayton 45402  Map!

Join Archbishop Dennis Schnurr on Sunday, December 29 at 4:00 PM at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains for the opening Mass of the Jubilee Year in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. For details about pilgrimage sites in the archdiocese, the Jubilee indulgence and more.