By Maria Wiering

(OSV News) — Signs around the Eternal City declare “Roma si trasforma” — “Rome is transformed” as an explanation for the ubiquitous infrastructure projects underway, including the restoration of iconic sculptures and monuments, ahead of Jubilee 2025, a Holy Year that begins Christmas Eve.

While the metropolis is seizing the opportunity for renewal, that is ultimately the jubilee’s expectation for the entire church. “For everyone, 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 in the document that officially declared the year.

Here are 10 things to know about the upcoming Jubilee Year.

1. A jubilee year, also known as a “holy year,” is a special year in the life of the church currently celebrated every 25 years. The most recent ordinary jubilee was in 2000, with Pope Francis calling for an Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2015-2016. Jubilee years have been held on regular intervals in the Catholic church since 1300, but they trace their roots to the Jewish tradition of marking a jubilee year every 50 years.

According to the Vatican website for the jubilee, these years in Jewish history were “intended to be marked as a time to re-establish a proper relationship with God, with one another, and with all of creation, and involved the forgiveness of debts, the return of misappropriated land, and a fallow period for the fields.”

2. Jubilee 2025 opens Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, at 7 p.m., with the rite of the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican immediately before Pope Francis celebrates midnight Mass. Holy Doors will also be opened at Rome’s three other major basilicas: St. John Lateran on Dec. 29, St. Mary Major on Jan. 1, and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls on Jan. 5.

A Holy Door will also be opened Dec. 26 at Rebibbia Prison, a Roman prison Pope Francis has visited twice before to celebrate Mass and wash inmates’ feet on Holy Thursday.

The doors represent the passage to salvation Jesus opened to humanity. In 1423, Pope Martin V opened the Holy Door in the Basilica of St. John Lateran — the Diocese of Rome’s cathedral — for the first time for a jubilee. For the Holy Year of 1500, Pope Alexander VI opened Holy Doors at Rome’s four main basilicas. At the end of a holy year, the Holy Doors are formally closed and then bricked over by masons.

3. The theme of the Holy Year is “Pilgrims of Hope.” The papal bull, issued May 9, that introduced the coming Jubilee Year is titled “Spes Non Confundit,” or “Hope does not disappoint,” drawn from Romans 5:5. “Everyone knows what it is to hope,” Pope Francis wrote. “In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring.

“Even so, uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt,” he continued. “Often we come across people who are discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could possibly bring them happiness. For all of us, may the Jubilee be an opportunity to be renewed in hope. God’s word helps us find reasons for that hope.”

Pope Francis also hopes the year draws Catholics toward patience, which he described in “Spes Non Confundit” as a “virtue closely linked to hope,” yet can feel elusive in “our fast-paced world, we are used to wanting everything now.”

4. Drawing on their Jewish roots, jubilee years emphasize the sacrament of reconciliation and restoring relationships with God. They also provide an opportunity for a special jubilee indulgence, which can remove the residual effects of sin through the grace of Christ.
5. The year calls Christians to action. Pope Francis called for “signs of hope” in the Jubilee Year, including the desire for peace in the world, openness to life and responsible parenthood, and closeness to prisoners, the poor, the sick, the young, the elderly, migrants and people “in difficult situations.” Pope Francis has called on affluent counties to forgive the debts of countries that would never be able to repay them, and address “ecological debt,” which he described as “connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time.”
6. Expect an influx of pilgrims in the Eternal City. Italy’s National Tourist Research Institute projects 35 million visitors in 2025, nearly triple of its 13 million visitors in 2023. Pilgrimage is a “fundamental” part of jubilee events, Pope Francis said in “Spes Non Confundit.” “Setting out on a journey is traditionally associated with our human quest for meaning in life. A pilgrimage on foot is a great aid for rediscovering the value of silence, effort and simplicity of life,” he wrote.

He noted that jubilee pilgrims are likely to visit Rome’s Christian catacombs and its seven pilgrim churches — the basilicas of St. Peter, St. Mary Major, St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls, St. Lawrence, Holy Cross and St. Sebastian — destinations St. Philip Neri popularized in the 16th century with a 15-mile walk. Twelve other Roman churches, including the Sanctuary of Divine Love in southeast Rome, are designated “jubilee churches” intended as gathering spots for pilgrims during the jubilee.

Experts in the travel and hospitality industries suggest anyone heading to Rome in 2025 — pilgrim or not — book accommodations, tickets and tours in advance. Visitors may also be expected to pay an increased tourist tax, depending on their type of accommodations.

7. Major events are happening in Rome, including jubilee gatherings with liturgies, speakers and papal audiences to celebrate different groups within the church. The first is the Jubilee of the World of Communications Jan. 24-26, followed by the Jubilee of the Armed Forces, Police and Security Personnel Feb. 8-9. The jubilee also includes gatherings for artists (Feb. 15-18), deacons (Feb. 21-23) and even marching bands (May 10-11). Some of these special gatherings will coincide with major canonizations, such as the canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis during the Jubilee of Teenagers April 25-27, and the canonization of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati during the Jubilee of Young People July 28-Aug. 3.

Expect some events to highlight the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, from which Christians received the Nicene Creed. This year, despite different liturgical calendars, the dates for celebrating Easter align in the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, leading some, including Pope Francis, to call for a “decisive step forward towards unity around a common date for Easter,” which was discussed in 325 at the Council of Nicaea.

8. Expect Rome to sparkle and shine. Many famous sites and artworks in Rome and at the Vatican have been cleaned or restored for the jubilee, much to the chagrin of many tourists in 2024, who found major monuments obscured by fencing, scaffolding and tarps. Many of those projects are expected to be completed with a fresh-face reveal in time for the jubilee. In October, St. Peter’s Basilica revealed its newly restored baldacchino, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the 1600s, after 10 months of work. Also receiving cleaning or restoration are Michelangelo’s Pietà, Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, and Bernini’s angels on the Ponte Sant’Angelo.
9. While many jubilee events will take place in Rome and at the Vatican, it’s a celebration for the whole church. On Dec. 29, diocesan bishops are expected to open the Holy Year locally with Masses at their cathedrals and co-cathedrals. Catholics are encouraged to make pilgrimages to their cathedral during the year, and should watch diocesan communications for local events. While Pope Francis encouraged bishops to designate Holy Doors for their own cathedrals during the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2015, there will only be Holy Doors at the Vatican and in Rome this year.
10. The Jubilee Year concludes with the closing of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica Jan. 6, 2026, on the feast of the Epiphany. However, the Holy Doors at Rome’s other major basilicas will close Dec. 28, 2025, the same day dioceses are to end local celebrations of the Holy Year.

The Jubilee Year also looks ahead to 2033, when the church will mark the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, which Pope Francis called “another fundamental celebration for all Christians.”

(Maria Wiering is senior writer for OSV News.)

By Lauretta Brown

(OSV News) — The church must continue to stand for the dignity of all human life under the incoming Trump administration.

That was the message from Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, chair of the bishops’ migration committee, and Bishop Daniel E. Thomas of Toledo, Ohio, the bishops’ new pro-life committee chair, who both spoke with OSV News at the U.S. bishops’ November meeting.

On the abortion issue, Bishop Thomas told OSV News that “the role of the church is very clear.”

“The church has taught forever and she continues to teach that the life of the unborn — as the U.S. bishops have repeatedly affirmed — that it’s the preeminent life issue because in the end the most innocent and vulnerable and voiceless of us are preborn children,” he said.

“We don’t know what that administration is or is not going to seek as policy,” he said of the Trump administration. “We have every idea of what people said in an election cycle. That does not mean that they’re going to be doing those things after their election.”

He said with the new administration, he will “look for the same thing I look for in any administration, that is the capacity to listen to the church, to work with the church and to try to respect what the church is trying to promote, to teach, to advocate and to pronounce and that is the Gospel of the life of Jesus Christ.”

“They can be certain that we will do everything we can to advocate for the dignity and sanctity of all human life and first and foremost, preeminently for the unborn,” he added.

Regarding the incoming Trump administration’s embrace of in vitro fertilization on the campaign trail, Bishop Thomas referenced the church’s long-standing teaching against IVF.

He said that the church will continue to say that “within a marital relationship between a man and a woman,” there should be openness to life, and that life “is the result of two elements which the sexual union is: unitive and procreative.”

If one of those elements is unnaturally impeded, he said, then “that is problematic both for what the church believes regarding life itself and what the church regards as marriage and family because ultimately it disrespects individuals and it disrespects persons.”

He said that while “the church is deeply understanding of and compassionate for those Catholic couples who have a difficulty having children,” at the same time, IVF “blocks the unitive dimension of a couple’s marriage, marital love and — as a result — makes it something which we are not able not only not to condone, but we have to say what marital love is truly like.”

Bishop Thomas expressed gratitude for the three pro-life victories in the 2024 election in the defeat of ballot measures in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.

While he deferred to the episcopal conferences in those states regarding their specific strategies, he said “there were practices across the board that were done that were very, very critical to education, to promotion, to clarity so that people would understand clearly what they were voting on because many of our Catholic people did not understand what they were voting on nor how radical those things were.”

“The reality is now we have to go forward and still press to work against those issues,” he said, “but I would certainly hope that the witness to life has not been diminished and I think we can say that people are encouraged.”

As for the path forward for the pro-life movement, Bishop Thomas said that path is “the path of the cross and Jesus trod that path for us.”

“Some people thought that with Roe v. Wade, it was over and it was done,” he said. “Tragically, now we’ve seen each state take to itself to address that and we will not be deterred and we will not in any way be discouraged because we know that we have the one who is the way, the truth and the life — Jesus himself — and if he is that, then we will follow his way. We will trust in his truth and convey that truth and we will depend on the life that he gives us to not only promote, but defend that life itself.”

Regarding the church’s concern for the lives of those seeking asylum in the U.S. under the Trump administration, Bishop Seitz told OSV News that for “those who are arriving to our southern border, we have a great concern for the suffering that they will undergo because Mexico has become an extremely dangerous place that profits off of the lives of immigrants.”

He said immigrants are “faced with extortion from not only organized crime, but from official police organizations and security organizations. The organized crime has found that they can make a lot of money off of them by kidnapping them and contacting people — relatives and the like — especially in the United States in order to pay the ransom. Many of them are facing attacks on their persons, physical attacks, rape.”

In light of what he sees immigrants face, he expressed concern that the U.S. is ignoring asylum law and “not allowing people even access to make an asylum claim.”

“You might have opinions on whether people who come are truly candidates for asylum,” he said, but “if you do not allow them a process, then are you willing to accept in conscience, the responsibility of sending people, perhaps to their death, who haven’t even had the opportunity to make that claim?”

“We need an effective, active asylum system, and remember, asylum by its nature, doesn’t allow you to wait six months or five years, for a person, in most cases, they are being under threat right now,” he said, “their children are starving right now and we need to have some response.”

He said that in order to mitigate the “extreme situation in which desperate people, who feel that they’re running for their life, need to choose desperate means in order to cross into the United States,” there should be “opportunities for asylum and you provide opportunities for work where work is available and you vet people to give them a visa, so they can work seasonally or longer term.”

He referenced the 175 people who died this year in the El Paso sector of the border that he ministers to; most of them died because “they didn’t have water and they were in the desert on a hot day.”

“They’re taking those risks for a reason,” he said. “They’re not stupid. They just know they don’t have any other options right now.”

Bishop Seitz is also concerned about continued legal challenges such as the one the El Paso Catholic nonprofit, Annunciation House, faced from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this year.

He said the state of Texas is “raising some direct challenges to the work of the church and other organizations that serve people who are extremely vulnerable” and that the vast majority of the immigrants served by these organizations “have been vetted through the system, they’ve applied, they’ve turned themselves in, they’ve been processed and given the opportunity to make their asylum case.”

The church, he said, has a responsibility “not to be doing the security vetting,” but “our task is to care for people who are in need. It’s simple.”

Bishop Seitz emphasized the church’s long history of teaching on immigration. “We’ve had a day, a World Day for Migrants and Refugees, for more than 100 years,” he noted, “from the early 1900s, but even before that, the church has always received pilgrims and migrants. And so, it is one of her fundamental works, the kind of work that hospices did in the past led to the creation of hospitals which were a Catholic work of grace.”

He encouraged the faithful to “read what the church has to teach” including statements from St. John Paul II and Pope Francis on the issue. He also encouraged people to “meet a migrant, meet a person who has recently entered your community. Ask them to tell you their story, and you’ll come to a very different understanding than what you’re perceiving in the media.”

(Lauretta Brown is culture editor for OSV News. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @LaurettaBrown6.)

By Kate Scanlon

(OSV News) — The incoming Trump administration should “rethink” its plans to carry out mass deportations, the bishops of New Mexico wrote in an open letter.

President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on hardline immigration policies, including his call for mass deportations, arguing in a September presidential debate that those without legal status “destroyed the fabric of our country,” and has since indicated willingness to use military force for a mass deportation program.

While Trump has not offered specifics on how he would carry out such a program, in principle, mass deportations run contrary to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes” condemning “deportation” among other actions, such as abortion, that “poison human society,” a teaching St. John Paul II affirmed in two encyclicals on moral truth and life issues.

In their letter, the border state’s bishops — Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces and Bishop James S. Wall of Gallup — said immigration “remains a complicated and challenging issue for the country.”

“While the Statue of Liberty is emblematic of immigration policies that have given immigrants a new lease on life and made our country great, we continue to witness tragic failures in our immigration policy that have put those fleeing injustice, persecution, and crime at great risk,” they wrote. “Moreover, our failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform has weakened the moral fiber of our society.”

“From the Catholic Church’s experience in working with migrants and refugees, we find that many who arrive to our nation are forced to migrate because of oppression and persecution,” they said. “They are victims of smugglers, human traffickers, and drug cartels. They suffer severe economic hardship and simply want to support their families with dignity. Most are not electing to migrate on a whim but are forced migrants, fleeing intolerable and inhumane conditions.”

The bishops added that at the same time, “we acknowledge that, as with any group, there are those who come for nefarious reasons and who commit violent crimes, and that Americans should be protected from these people. Likewise, we agree that a sovereign country has the right to manage its borders, albeit in a manner which protects human rights and dignity.”

Arguing that the immigration system “is broken and is in need of reform,” the bishops said policies “that ignore the human rights of those who come to the border and undermine human dignity are not the way to fix things.”

“While it is true that sovereign nations have a right and a responsibility to control their borders, this is not an absolute right, as the management of borders must be accompanied with humane treatment and due process protections,” the letter said. “We can achieve both goals: the protection of human rights and the security of the border and the nation.”

A mass deportation policy, they argued, will not fix those problems but would instead “create chaos, family separation, and the traumatization of children.”

“While removing those who cause harm to us is necessary, deporting immigrants who have built equities in our communities and pose no threat is contrary to humanitarian principles and to our national interest,” they said. “We urge the new administration to rethink this proposed deportation policy and instead return to bipartisan negotiations to repair the US immigration system.”

While they are not politicians, they added, they believe elected officials should embrace these moral principles as a foundation for good and just laws.

“As Scripture tells us, for those to whom much has been given, much is expected,” the letter said, in reference to Luke 12:48. “We, the bishops of New Mexico, pray that the United States — our great nation under God — will continue to justly receive our fellow human beings into our country, recognizing the many gifts that are ours in the world of great human suffering.”

The bishops added they “stand ready to work with the new administration on achieving immigration policies which are just, humane, and reflect the values of America.”

Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @kgscanlon.