2025 is a jubilee year declared by His Holiness Pope Francis. Jubilee has its origin in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, chapter 15, where the Hebrews are encouraged to celebrate every fiftieth year as a jubilee. They were to do this by returning all land to its original owner, the freeing of all Hebrew slaves, the cancelling of debt, showing the overflowing of God’s mercy. There is, however, doubt whether this injunction was ever carried out.

Nevertheless, in 1300 Pope Boniface VIII declared a holy year. Since then ordinary jubilee years have been celebrated every fifty years, this being reduced to every twenty five years. There have been extraordinary jubilee years for some special purpose or occasion, in addition to these ordinary ones.

Christian jubilee years have the same basic character as the Jewish ones. In ancient Rome a pagan jubilee may well have been kept to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the city.

For Catholics, a jubilee or holy year is a time of forgiveness for sin as well as the punishment resulting from sin. It celebrates the time of conversion and the celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation. Therefore an important element of jubilee is hope, justice, and the promise to serve God with joy and in his peace. In all this we join in solidarity with our brother and sister Catholics.

A jubilee year may be ordinary, as in the case of 2025, or extraordinary, as it was in 2016 when Pope Francis announced a special holy year, calling it “The Face of Mercy”.

According to the Papal Bull issued by Pope Francis on 9th May 2024, the Jubilee of 2025 is to one of hope. The Holy Father quotes St Paul in his letter of the Romans in chapter five, “Hope does not disappoint.”

It is apt then, that the Holy Father not only calls the Jubilee, but places it under St Paul’s vision of hope. Hope is a quality in short supply in the modern world. It is a world of fear, disease, hunger, want, deprivation and decadence. Our own country has embraced abortion, buffer zones round the clinics destroying the unborn and has now set itself on the path to assisted suicide. Hope is needed all right. In his Bull, Pope Francis writes,

“My thoughts turn to all those pilgrims of hope who will travel to Rome in order to experience the Holy Year and to all those others who, though unable to visit the City of the Apostles Peter and Paul, will celebrate it in their local churches. For everyone, may the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the “door” (cf. Jn 10:7.9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as “our hope” (1 Tim 1:1).

Hope is an essential quality. Our world needs Christian hope more then ever in 2025, but not just a vain, unrealistic hope. St Paul is a realist, and has no time for such an empty understanding of hope, For St Paul, hope is an essential element of living the Christian life. The Holy Father writes: 

“(St Paul) knows that life has its joys and sorrows, that love is tested amid trials, and that hope can falter in the face of suffering. Even so, he can write, “We boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom 5:3-4).

As well as being a year of hope, this Jubilee is also a celebration of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 325AD. We recite the Creed of this council every Sunday at Mass. It encapsulates the heart of the Catholic Faith.

This Jubilee Year begins at 7pm (Vatican time) on 24th December 2025 when Pope Francis will formally open the Holy Year with the rite of the Opening of the Holy Door of the Papal Basilica of St Peter. He will then preside over the celebration of Mass inside the Basilica, on the night of the Lord's Birth.

The Holy Father closes the Papal Bull announcing the Holy Jubilee Year by writing:

“Let us even now be drawn to this hope! 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!” (Ps 27:14). May the power of hope fill our days, as we await with confidence the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and glory, now and forever.”

It is to be hoped that all readers of The Portal and all Ordinariate members, will keep and celebrate this Holy Year of Jubilee by visiting the Holy City, and walking through the Holy Doors, but if this is not possible, that we shall celebrate Holy Year with Christian hope.