The Jubilee 2025 inviting people to be ‘pilgrims of hope’ began with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on 24 December 2024 and will end on 6 January 2026.
At the diocesan level, the Holy Year opened on Sunday 29 December 2024 and will end on Sunday 28 December 2025.
After the Holy Doors of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Rebibbia Penitentiary, opened by Pope Francis, it is now time for Rome’s basilica, St. John Lateran.
It was not, in this case, the Pope who presided over the celebration, but the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, Card. Baldassarre Reina. It was a much-awaited moment because, with the opening of this Holy Door, the Jubilee 2025 officially begins in all the dioceses of the world.
Some Sisters of Charity from Rome participated in the opening of the Holy Door of the Basilica of St John Lateran:
‘We spent Christmas Day having lunch together with the mothers and children of a shelter on the outskirts of Rome, where a Sister from our community works, the Gospel passages that the liturgy has given us during these holy days of Christmas, the very well attended celebrations in our parish, the sharing of prayers in community…prepared us for this moment so full of light, joy, mercy.
The words of Bishop Reina descended on our hearts: ‘The open arms of the Father are the holy door. It is the embrace without reticence, that of the Father, founded on tenderness, compassion and unshakable hope, capable of restoring dignity, insists the cardinal. It does not matter how far we have gone, it does not matter what we have done, wasted or ruined. The moment we have decided to return we will never find a closed door, but an embrace that welcomes and blesses’.
