VATICAN (CNS): While bishops around the world are asked to designate their cathedrals or other significant churches as special places of pilgrimage and prayer for the Holy Year 2025, the Vatican is not asking them to dedicate and open a Holy Door at those churches.
The Dicastery for Evangelisation, which is coordinating the celebration of the Jubilee, issued a note on August 1 praising “the pastoral and devotional motivations” of bishops who wanted to designate a local Holy Door but saying the only ones will be those at the basilicas of St. Peter at the Vatican, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major and St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome and, perhaps, at a prison.
In Spes Non Confundit [Hope Does Not Disappoint], the papal bull officially proclaiming the Holy Year, Pope Francis wrote that “in order to offer prisoners a concrete sign of closeness, I would myself like to open a Holy Door in a prison, as a sign inviting prisoners to look to the future with hope and a renewed sense of confidence.”
The Dicastery for Evangelisation pointed out that the pope did not make such a request of bishops for the Holy Year 2025.
Instead, Pope Francis asked bishops to celebrate the solemn opening of the jubilee on Sunday, December 29, and suggested that “a pilgrimage that sets out from a church chosen for the ‘collectio’ and then proceeds to the cathedral can serve to symbolise the journey of hope that, illumined by the word of God, unites all the faithful.”
In Catholic tradition, the Holy Door represents the passage to salvation—the path to a new and eternal life, which was opened to humanity by Jesus.
The tradition goes back more than 600 years. Pope Martin V, in 1423, opened the Holy Door in the Basilica of St. John Lateran
The Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court dealing with matters of conscience and with the granting of indulgences, issued a document in May spelling out how Catholics can receive the traditional Holy Year indulgence, which the church describes as a remission of the temporal punishment a person is due for their sins.
The document said that bishops should designate their cathedral or another church or sacred place as local sites for Holy Year pilgrims. “Bishops will take into account the needs of the faithful as well as the opportunity to reinforce the concept of pilgrimage with all its symbolic significance, so as to manifest the great need for conversion and reconciliation,” the Vatican court said.
Pope Francis will open the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on December 24 and at St. John Lateran on December 29. The Holy Door at St. Mary Major will be opened on January 1, he said, and at St. Paul Outside the Walls on January 5.
