Different. This is what it will be like this Christmas for the more than 1.4 billion Catholics in the world.
In addition to celebrating the birth of Jesus, this December 24, the Catholic Church will begin an event that has been recorded for seven centuries and that only occurs a couple of times each century: a Holy Year or a Jubilee.
The celebration, which will have the motto “Pilgrims of Hope”, will extend throughout 2025 until January 6, 2026, as announced by Pope Francis.
But what is a Jubilee? What is it about and since when and for what reason is it celebrated? To answer these and other unknowns, BBC Mundo consulted theologians and historians and reviewed sacred and historical texts.
Since the time of Moses
“Jubilee” is the name given to a particular and special year in the liturgical calendar, reads the website that the Vatican launched especially for the occasion.
The event has biblical origins.
“Yahweh said to Moses on Mount Sinai: ‘The year 50 will be a Holy Year for you, a year in which you will proclaim an amnesty for all the inhabitants of the country. It will be the Jubilee for you,’” reads the book of Leviticus, a text that is part of both the Jewish Torah and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.
“It was a great liberation event; It consisted of a kind of general pardon”Pope Francis explained in 2015.
“It was a time for the Israelite to reestablish his relationship with God and return to a just and morally upright life,” Andres Martínez Esteban, professor of Church History at the San Dámaso University (Spain), tells BBC Mundo.
The term Jubilee is believed to derive from the Hebrew word “yobel”which is used to identify a musical instrument made from the horn of a ram and that was used by the Jews to mark the beginning of this festival.
Spiritual and earthly goals
The Jewish Jubilee had a spiritual and also a material purpose.
“Those who had to pawn their property will recover it. The slaves will return to their family. This 50th year will be the Jubilee for you. They will not sow or reap the sprouts, nor will they harvest the uncultivated vineyard, since it is a jubilee year. It will be a Holy Year for you in which you will eat what the field produces by itself. This jubilee year, each one will return to his property,” is ordered in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus.
“It’s a gap year”adds María Jesús Fernández Cordero, professor of Church History at the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical University Comillas (Spain).
“A year in which properties were restored, since the sales and purchases were not forever but lasted until the Jubilee. A time when the land was allowed to rest and the Hebrew slaves had to be freed and debts forgiven,” the expert tells BBC Mundo.
The pontiff himself assured that the Jewish celebration sought materially favor “the poor, orphans and widows”.
“Debts were canceled and the lands were returned to their owners, because the central idea is that the land belongs to God and has been entrusted to men as administrators,” he explained in 2015.
The Christianization of tradition
In the year 1300, Pope Boniface VIII incorporated Jewish tradition into the heritage of the Church and called what is considered the first universal Catholic Jubilee.
The papal decision was motivated by the request made by a crowd of Romans to celebrate the beginning of the new centuryreads in a book in the Vatican archives.
“The Church takes this tradition thanks to what (the gospel of) Luke relates that happened when Jesus began his public preaching in the synagogue of Nazareth,” said Fernández Cordero.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me and sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the oppressed, and to preach the “year of favor from the Lord,” says the biblical passage to which the expert refers.
Before Boniface VIII’s decision, another pope, Calixtus II, established another Catholic jubilee decades before, but with a more limited scope: the Jacobean (Xacobeo in Galician)which is celebrated in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela.
This holy year is dedicated to Santiago, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and whose tomb is believed to be in the cathedral of the Galician city. The celebration occurs every time July 25, when the Apostle’s feast day, coincides with a Sunday.
Originally Catholic jubilees were celebrated every centurybut in 1342 Pope Clement VI established that they would occur every 50 years, like the Hebrews, according to Vatican records.
However, in 1389, under the pontificate of Urban VI, another modification of the periods was approved and it was established that the holy years would be celebrated every 33 years, in memory of the number of years that, according to the Bible, Christ lived.
But in 1475 another pope, Sixtus IV, decided that they would be celebrated regularly every 25 years, so that ““Every generation will participate in at least one.”indicated the theologian Santiago Ausín Olmos. This tradition continues to this day.
However, the leader of the Catholic Church has the power to call jubilees in an extraordinary manner such as the one recorded in 1983, decreed by John Paul II to commemorate the 1,950 years of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus; or the most recent one from 2015 that Francis dedicated to mercy, the experts explained.
Although the next Jubilee will take place throughout 2025, it will begin before the year itself begins, particularly on the eve of Christmas. Because? “Because it is the closest key religious date”responds Martínez Esteban.
However, only ordinary holy years usually begin on this holiday. The 2015 Holy Year of Mercy began on December 8 and ended on November 20 of the following year.
The holy doors and other rites
The Jubilee will begin with a tradition that is more than five centuries old: the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica by Pope Francis. This is what is announced in the bull Spes non confundit (Hope does not confuse) that the Argentine pontiff published on May 9.
And between December 29 and January 5, the other holy doors in the other three papal basilicas in Rome (Saint John Lateran; Saint Mary the Great; and Saint Paul Outside the Walls) will open.
Through these doors, which are opened exclusively during holy years, the millions of faithful who are estimated to travel to Rome throughout 2025 are expected to pass as part of the rites they must follow. to gain “indulgence”; that is, the forgiveness of sins.
The rite of crossing the holy doors has its theological explanation in the Gospel of Saint John, where Jesus assures: “I am the door: whoever enters through me will be saved.”.
However, on this occasion, another one will be added to the four aforementioned doors, which is not located in a temple or sanctuary, but in a prison. In the Roman penitentiary of Rebibbia.
A gesture with which Francis not only wants to offer “the prisoners a concrete sign of closeness,” but with which he hopes to give strength to their demands so that their human rights are guaranteed and governments outlaw the death penalty.
The public display of relics of saints is another of the jubilee customs.
To walk in search of forgiveness
The main objective of the holy years is for believers to obtain plenary indulgence.
“Forgiving does not change the past, it cannot modify what has already happened; and yet Forgiveness can allow you to change the future and live in a different way, without resentment, anger or revenge.”wrote the pope in his bull.
“The future illuminated by forgiveness makes it possible for the past to be read with other, more serene eyes, even if they are still streaked with tears,” added the leader of the Catholic Church.
The Vatican has not yet reported in detail what requirements the faithful must meet to obtain absolution on this occasion, but the pilgrimage to Rome is one.
“Setting out is a typical gesture of those who seek the meaning of life,” the Pope wrote.
During the Great Jubilee of 2000, 24.5 million people visited the so-called eternal city, according to Vatican data, while the Italian Statistical Center raised that figure to 32 million.
In the first Jubilee, the faithful were required to visit the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Outside the Walls 30 times a year.
But why Rome and not Jerusalem, Bethlehem or the other sacred sites of the Holy Land? “For historical reasons and ecclesial sense”explains Fernández Cordero.
“When the first documented Jubilee was celebrated, in 1300, Jerusalem was in the power of the Muslims and the Pope (Nicholas IV) had only managed, after negotiating with the Sultan, to send a group of Franciscan friars to maintain the Latin liturgy in the Holy Sepulchre”, points out the historian.
“Since the time of the apostles, Rome has been considered the center of Christianity.because it is there where the first of the apostles (Simon-Peter) founded the community of which he was bishop and by placing the center of Christianity in Rome, capital of the empire, its universality was clear,” adds Martínez Esteban.
And what happens to those who, for economic or health reasons, cannot travel to the Italian capital? They will also be able to obtain absolution, the pontiff assured.
“The jubilee indulgence (…) may be obtained according to the prescriptions contained in the same ritual for the celebration of the Jubilee in the particular Churches,” the pope announced in his bull.
This Holy Year will be followed by the one that will be celebrated in 2033, on the occasion of the 2,000 years of the death and resurrection of Christ.
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