Pope Francis said the story of Jesus’ birth as a poor carpenter’s son should instil hope that all people can make an impact on the world, as the pontiff on Tuesday (24), led the world’s Roman Catholics into Christmas.
Francis, celebrating the 12th Christmas of his pontificate, presided at a solemn Christmas Eve Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica and opened the 2025 Catholic Holy Year, which the Vatican expects will bring some 32 million tourists to Rome next year.
In a sermon focused on the virtue of hope, which is also the theme of the Holy Year, the pontiff said hope “is a summons not to tarry, to be kept back by our old habits, or to wallow in mediocrity or laziness”.
Pope Francis opened the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica, the evening of December 24, he ushered in the widely-anticipated 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope.
With the liturgical gesture of the Door’s opening at the start of the Christmas Mass during the Night, as explained in the papal bull for the Jubilee Spes non confundit, the Pope inaugurated the Ordinary Jubilee, a historic event taking place every 25 years.
The Ordinary Jubilee will conclude with the closing of the same Holy Door on January 6, 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.
The Holy Door is deemed ‘Holy’ since it calls all those who enter through it to walk in holiness of life. In the footsteps of the Pope, during the singing of the Jubilee hymn, representatives of the entire People of God crossed its threshold, as a prelude to the countless pilgrims of hope from every country and language who will visit St. Peter’s Basilica and celebrate the mysteries of salvation during the Holy Year.
The origin of the custom goes back to Pope Martin V who, for the Extraordinary Jubilee of 1423, opened a Holy Door to enter the Lateran Basilica. In St. Peter’s, it was first used for the Jubilee of 1450.
Its location, the rear wall of the chapel dedicated by Pope John VII to the Mother of God, corresponds to a place where it is found today. Pope Alexander VI, in 1500, endowed this symbol of the opening of the Jubilee with a ritual that remained virtually unchanged over the centuries, until the turn of the millennium, when in the year 2000, the removal of the former brick wall was replaced by the ceremonial opening of the bronze Door already in 1983.
The last opening of the Holy Door for an Ordinary Jubilee was when Pope St. John Paul II had done so in the year 2000. Pope Francis opened the Holy Door in 2015 for his 2016 Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.
(Vatican News)
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