(Vatican Insider. By ITV staff).
“Watching people from all over the world praying… it’s an experience of the universal Church. For me, it reinforces my faith,” Joan Lewis, author of A Holy Year in Rome: The Complete Pilgrim’s Guide for the Jubilee of Mercy, held in 2016, told Catholic News Agency in a 2023 interview.
The Jubilee Year called by Pope Francis for the year 2025 — ordinarily held in the Catholic Church every 25 years, although a jubilee may be called by the Pope for a special reason — is to have the theme: “Pilgrims of Hope.” As Francis explains in a 2022 letter to the President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, Archbishop Rino Fisichella: The Jubilee has always been an event of great spiritual, ecclesial, and social significance in the life of the Church. Ever since 1300, when Boniface VIII instituted the first Holy Year – initially celebrated every hundred years, then, following its biblical precedent, every fifty years, and finally every twenty-five years – God’s holy and faithful people has experienced this celebration as 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. The faithful, frequently at the conclusion of a lengthy pilgrimage, draw from the spiritual treasury of the Church by passing through the Holy Door and venerating the relics of the Apostles Peter and Paul preserved in Roman basilicas. More than 30 million pilgrims are expected to arrive in Rome for the 2025 Jubilee Year. Preparations are already underway in the city, including directly outside Vatican News’ offices, where a new pedestrian area is being constructed. Buildings, monuments, churches, streets and sidewalks are being cleaned and restored.