Pope Francis opens Holy Door inaugurating 2025 Jubilee
Pope Francis opens the Holy Door of Saint Peter's Basilica thereby officially inaugurating the 2025 Jubilee of Hope. He reassures during his Christmas evening Mass that the Christ Child of Bethlehem offers the world infinite hope and joy.
( Vaticannews )As Pope Francis opened the Holy Door of Saint Peter's Basilica, the evening of 24 December 2024, 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 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.
