The Year of Jubilee 2025

All schools across England and Wales are celebrating the start of the Jubilee year!

What is the Jubilee year?

A Jubilee Year, in the Catholic Church, also known as a ‘Holy Year’, is a special year of forgiveness and reconciliation in which people are invited to come back into the right relationship with God, with one another, and all of creation.

The Jubilee Year today is celebrated every 25 years in the Catholic Church. This has been the case since 1470, when Pope Paul II changed it from every 50 years.

What is the theme of the Year of Jubilee in 2025?

This theme that Pope Francis has chosen this year is ‘Pilgrims of Hope’. The Pope has invited Catholics to renew our hope and discover a vision that can “restore access to the fruits of the earth to everyone.”. In addition, we are invited to rediscover a spirituality of God’s creation in which we understand ourselves as ‘pilgrims on the earth’.

When does the Jubilee Year start and finish?

The 2025 Jubilee year starts on Christmas Eve 2024 and ends on 6th January 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany.

What is the biblical background for the Year of Jubilee?

The word Jubilee comes from the Jewish word ‘yobel’, which is a ram’s horn. In the bible, this wind instrument is blown to mark the start of the Jubilee Year.

In the bible, the Jubilee Year occurred every 50 years and was a year dedicated to rest, the restoration of property, and freeing people from debts, servitude, and slavery.

What is a Holy Door?

The four Holy Doors are entrances, kept sealed except during Jubilee years, that lead into four major basilicas in Rome. The opening of the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican marks the beginning of the Jubilee Year. For the first time, Pope Francis has designated a Holy Door in a prison, a tangible sign that God’s love and forgiveness extends to everyone.

What is the Year of Prayer in 2024?

In preparation for the 2025 Jubilee Year, 2024 was marked by Pope Francis as a Year of Prayer. He asks us all to join him in a great ‘symphony of prayer’, to renew our desire to be in the presence of the Lord, to listen to him and to adore him.

‘By our actions, our words, the decisions we make each day, our patient efforts to sow seeds of beauty and kindness wherever we find ourselves, we want to sing of hope…and reawaken in every heart the joy and the courage to embrace life to the full.’
Pope Francis

More information and activities around our Jubilee Year are available here.