Last Thursday, on the solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, Pope Francis officially proclaimed the ordinary Jubilee of 2025 with the public reading and delivery of the papal bull of indiction. The bull, titled Spes Non Confudit (Latin for “Hope Does Not Disappoint”), declares that the Jubilee Year will begin with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve 2024. “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’,” Pope Francis wrote.
A jubilee is a special holy year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. Ordinary jubilees, like this one, usually take place every quarter of a century (the last one was the Great Jubilee of Year 2000, proclaimed by Pope St. John Paul II), though popes can call for extraordinary jubilee years more often, as was the case with the 2016 Year of Mercy and the 2013 Year of Faith. This time, the city of Rome expects to receive over 30 million pilgrims. To visit the official website in English of the Jubilee of 2025, click here.
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