Jubilee of Hope, Pope invites everyone to enter Holy Door symbol of Christ

The 27th ordinary Jubilee in the history of the Church has begun. On Christmas Eve, Francis arrived at the Holy Door in a wheelchair and according to tradition knocked three times. Then the doors forged by Vico Consorti opened wide as the bells of St Peter's began to toll. “This is the night when the door of hope opened wide to the world; this is the night when God says to each one: there is hope for you too,” said Bergoglio in his homily during the Eucharistic celebration.

A Jubilee dedicated to hope, nine years after the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. In his homily, after quoting a meditation from a book by Father Alessandro Pronzato, the Pope explained that this Jubilee "invites us to rediscover the joy of encountering the Lord, calls us to spiritual renewal and commits us to the transformation of the world, so that it may truly be a Jubilee: May it be so for our Mother Earth, disfigured by the logic of profit; may it be so for the poorest countries, burdened by unjust debts; may it be so for all those who are prisoners of old and new slavery.

At the end of the Mass for the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, Francis brought the statue of the child Jesus to the nativity scene in the Basilica, accompanied by a group of children from different continents dressed in traditional costumes. On Christmas Day, the Pope emerged on the Loggia of the Blessings for the Urbi et Orbi message, flanked by Cardinal Protodeacon Dominique Mamberti and the former Special Delegate for the Order of Malta, Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi. In the words of Francis, a plea for peace for the most dramatic scenarios of the geopolitical situation: Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia and Nicaragua. This Christmas, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year," said Bergoglio, "I invite every person, every people and every nation to have the courage to go through the door, to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the weapons and overcome the divisions. A special mention was made of the community of Gaza, followed by a call for the release of the Israeli hostages. The Pope also mentioned the case of Cyprus, where the last dividing wall in Europe remains, and then returned to ask the richer countries to forgive the debts of the poorer ones.

On the feast of St Stephen, however, it was the opening of the second Holy Door: the one that the Pope had particularly wished for in the Roman prison of Rebibbia. In Spes non confundit, the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee of 2025, Francis had asked for concrete signs of hope also for prisoners. And he gave the example by choosing to go to one of Rome's prisons to open the only door in addition to those of the four Roman papal basilicas.

Unlike on Christmas Eve, Francis got up from his wheelchair yesterday, knocked three times and then crossed the threshold standing up. In his homily at Mass, Bergoglio said that the path of hope leads to forgiveness and freedom. And he insisted: "The door we open in this prison is a sign of Christ, our brother and Saviour, who opens our lives wide to God. As we begin the Jubilee together, let us reflect on these two goals: forgiveness and freedom. Francis then received gifts from a delegation of inmates, and on his way out, speaking to journalists, he said that his presence in Rebibbia was important "because we have to think that many of these are not big fish, the big fish have the wisdom to stay outside and we have to accompany the inmates.