St Mary of the Angels Primary School: The Jubilee Year

Pope Francis has announced that 2025 will be a year of Jubilee – an event that happens every 25 years.

The theme for the upcoming Jubilee is “Pilgrims of Hope”.

The 2025 Jubilee will begin in Advent 2024 and will run until the Feast of the Epiphany in 2026.

Although this is a global celebration, Pope Francis invites dioceses throughout the world to mark the Jubilee in their own unique way and we look forward to sharing a whole range of different activities, events, and resources with you during the Jubilee year.

Here at St Mary of the Angels we have planned events to celebrate the Jubilee Year and to journey through this time together in joy and hope.

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

Pope Francis has invited Catholics to renew our hope and discover a vision that can "restore access to the fruits of the earth to everyone". We are also invited to rediscover a spirituality of God's creation in which we understand ourselves as "pilgrims on the earth" rather than masters of the world.

A Jubilee Year is celebrated by the Church every 25 years. This has been the case since 1470, when Pope Paul II changed it from every 50 years. A Pope can also proclaim an Extraordinary Jubilee, like the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy which Pope Francis inaugurated in 2015.

In the Bible the Jubilee Year occurred every 50 years and involved the cancelling of debts, a period of rest for people and the earth, and land being restored to the landless. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes clear his own mission is to bring Jubilee. In the synagogue at Nazareth he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming the year of the Lord's favour:

Here are just some of the Jubilee Celebrations we have planned for this special year:

December 2024: Our Advent Service will start the year with Hope

January 2025: Our Launch Day will be 24th January!

February 2025: Prayer Trail Day

March 2025: Travelling Prayer Book during Lent

April 2025: Stay and Pray with us during Holy Week

May 2025: "Care for Creation" day with our friends and community

June 2025: Pilgrimage Walk day - delivering messages of hope

July 2025 - Hope for the Future Day of Prayer

September 2025 - Revisiting our Mission Statement

One of the great traditions of a Jubilee Year is the opening of Holy Doors. They are signs of welcome for pilgrims during the Jubilee celebrations. For the Holy Year of 2025, the first Holy Door that Pope Francis opened was at St Peter's Basilica in Rome. The second was the door of a prison. Arriving at the Rebibbia Prison in Rome, the Pope spoke about the importance of opening the Door there. In front of the prison's chapel, Pope Francis explained that he wanted everyone to "have the opportunity to fling open the doors to their hearts and to understand that hope never disappoints."

Open doors, open hearts

After walking through the Holy Door himself, the Pope presided over Mass in the church. In his homily, Pope Francis reflected on the historic reason for his visit, describing it as “a beautiful gesture of opening.” But more than simply opening doors, the Pope encouraged the prisoners present, to open their hearts. Brotherhood, he said, is "open hearts."