Rome: What’s up with the 2025 Jubilee.

Rome is just a 2 hour flight from Valencia so even Ryan Air’s uncomfortable seats can be manageable. We plunked our two carry-ons in the overheads and sat with a sizable and friendly Bulgarian fellow living in Valencia somehow wedged between us. There went the manageability. He’s with his wife and children, with them to the rear of the plane although at first I thought they were hiding in the jacket he was wearing. They were heading for a short visit to the Eternal City.

We chose this holiday period to visit Rome as it’s a Jubilee year. Jubilees are always preceded by projects that hope to improve Rome’s infrastructure as well maintaining churches, statues and other works of art. It starts with the opening of “holy doors.”

A Jubilee is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church every 25 years. For the faithful it has spiritual significance, being “A Holy Year of the forgiveness of sin, conversion and joyful celebration.” Catholic Life. In days gone by this pilgrimage came with a promised reduction in the time spent in purgatory but nowadays it is wrapped in aspirational themes.

Wondering, as I was, where the “jubilee” came from? In the Hebrew Bible, aka the Old Testament, it is a year of “emancipation and restoration.” Every 50 years you were to emancipate enslaved Hebrews, restore lands to their former owners, and not cultivate the land. Sounds like a pretty rough year unless you were an an enslaved Hebrew or had lost your land somehow, aside from the travails of the then current owner.

The first of the Roman Catholic Church jubilees occurred in 1300. At first it was celebrated every 100 years, later dropped to 50 and then 25 years, where it remains. But wait! There were ‘special jubilee years in 1983, the 1,950th anniversary of the death of Jesus, and 2015, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second Vatican Council. There will be another in 2033, 2000 years after the death of Jesus. Nothing like a jubilee to cheer you up, I guess.

This Jubilee has various themes including 1) the world of communication (24 January) , 2) Armed Forces (8 February), 3) artists (16 February), Jubilee of Deacons (21 February), 4) Volunteering (8 March), 5) those who are ill (5 April), 6) adolescents (25 April), 7) People with disabilities (28 April), 8) workers (1 May), 9) Children (24 May), 10) Families, grandparents and elderly people (30 May), 11) sports (14 June), 12) young people (28 July), 9) migrants (5 October), 13) the poor (16 November). The jubilee is a way of highlighting causes deemed worthy of attention.

Planners anticipate that some 35 million plan to make the pilgrimage in 2026, with a million or so choosing this Christmas period. The Jubilee officially started on December 24, 2024 with the opening of the so called “Holy Doors” at St. Peter’s Basilica, and ending on January 6, 2026. There are ‘holy doors’ at all the Vatican churches in Rome and elsewhere. My favorite is the huge door at San Giovane in Laterano, being that taken from the Roman senate at the forum, which is just a short distance away.

Above: Pope Francis at St. Peter’s “Holy Door” on 12/24. He’s nearly 90 and not in the best of health.

There a number of events of note during the Jubilee. See Program Expect Concerts and exhibitions galore (the Vatican’s ‘concerts’ link is not working as of this writing).

There are numerous infrastructure projects in Rome, with a total of 115 planned. The total cost of the projects is estimated at €1.2 trillion, about $1.5 trillion USD. The city expects to recoup a significant portion of the expenditures from the additional anticipated tourist taxes. Among the projects:

An €85 million infrastructure project created a new tunnel along with the pedestrianization of Piazza Pia. It now links Castel S. Angelo to Via della Conciliazione and St Peter’s Square. Trevi Fountain was just reopened to view, sparkling clean and with crowd controls limiting visitors to 400 at a time, according to a local in the know. The main Tram stop for the Vatican, Line 19, now has been cleaned up and beautified with stone pavements. San Giovanni in Laterano is currently enclosed by fencing on the front side. It is due to open on December 28, along with a host of others before year’s end, Mayor Gualtieri running about with sharpened scissors as a host of other projects come to conclusion.