The Vatican has crossed a key milestone in the runup to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year.
It’s a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought months of headaches to Romans.
Pope Francis presided over a ceremony in the atrium of St Peter’s Basilica for the reading of the papal bull, or official edict, that laid out his vision for a year of hope: He asked for gestures of solidarity for the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.
“Hope is needed by God’s creation, gravely damaged and disfigured by human selfishness,” Francis said in a vigil service afterwards.
“Hope is needed by those peoples and nations who look to the future with anxiety and fear.”
The pomp-filled event, attended by cardinals, bishops and ordinary faithful, kicked off the final seven-month dash of preparations and public works projects to be completed by December 24, when Francis opens the basilica’s Holy Door and formally inaugurates the Jubilee.
For the Vatican, the Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition of the faithful making pilgrimages to Rome to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul, and receiving indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins in the process.
For the city of Rome, it’s a chance to take advantage of some €4 billion ($6.52 billion) in public funds to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of decay and neglect.
“In a beautiful city, you live better,” said the Vatican’s Jubilee point-person, Archbishop Renato Fisichella, who himself is not indifferent to the added bonus of Jubilee funding.
“Rome will become an even more beautiful city, because it will be ever more at the service of its people, pilgrims and tourists who will come.”
Pope Boniface VIII declared the first Holy Year in 1300, and now they are held every 25 years. While Francis called an interim one devoted to mercy in 2015, the 2025 edition is the first big one since St John Paul II’s 2000 Jubilee, when he ushered the Catholic Church into the third millennium.
As occurred in the runup to 2000, pre-Jubilee public works projects have overwhelmed Rome, with flood-lit construction sites operating around the clock, entire swaths of central boulevards rerouted and traffic snarling the city’s already clogged streets.
