By Ononye VC
Pope Francis on Thursday used the Feast of Ascension to preside over the reading of a papal bull at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, declaring 2025 a Holy Year for Catholics around the world.
The event, which happens every 25 years, will begin on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2024; and continue through Epiphany, on January 6, 2026.
Francis proclaimed that the theme of the celebration would be “hope,” and called on wealthy nations to forgive debts owed them by poorer ones, suggesting they, “acknowledge the gravity of so many of their past decisions and determine to forgive the debts of countries that will never be able to pay them.”
He also pointed to the, “ecological debt connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time.
“Hope,” said the pontiff during a vigil after the official reading, “is needed by God’s creation — gravely damaged and disfigured by human selfishness. Hope is needed by those peoples and nations who look to the future with anxiety and fear.”
The tradition of the Holy Year, which was begun by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, begins with the pope throwing open the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica and inviting pilgrims to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul. The Jubilee involves indulgences for the forgiveness of sins and requires pilgrims to visit four of the city’s major cathedrals (St. Peter’s, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul Outside the Walls).
Though Francis declared an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016, the last major Holy Year, the Great Jubilee, was held in 2000, in which Pope John Paul II led the Roman Catholic Church into the third millennium.
