Dioceses across the world celebrate opening of Jubilee Year

By Lisa Zengarini

Bishops worldwide celebrated the opening of the 2025 Jubilee Year  on December 29  with Masses in their cathedrals and co-cathedrals focused on hope, the central  theme of the Holy Year which Pope Francis inaugurated on Christmas Eve with the solemn opening   of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Holy Land

In the Holy Land Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa presided over the  celebratory Mass for his diocese  at the  Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. The celebration began with a procession that symbolized a collective journey toward renewal and hope.

In his sermon, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem noted that the ongoing violence and suffering in the Holy Land has “imprisoned” all communities within their fears preventing  them “from having the courage to look upon others with trust and, therefore, with hope.”

Referring to the Jubilee theme Cardinal Pizzaballa acknowledged that it is very difficult to speak of hope, “when everything around us speaks of war, violence, poverty, and hardship." At the same time, he emphasized,  that "hope needs faith” and, as Saint Paul teaches us also ”requires patience”. “Patience without hope is mere resignation “ and “hope without patience is a delusion” , he said.

The Patriarch reminded the faithful  that the Jubilee  Year offers an opportunity for God to forgive our sins and renew our hearts, enabling us to continue our journey with hope and joy.”

London 

The urgency of renewal in our world  “scarred with tragedy, conflict and cruelty” and for those for whom “the pilgrimage of life is harsh and unrelenting” was also the focus of Cardinal Vincent Nichols’s reflection during the opening Mass he presided over at Westminster Cathedral in London. Jubilees, he said in the homily “are occasions for the Church to  undergo a 'reset'. And this Holy Year invites us to deepen and renew the place of hope in our lives.”

Cardinal Nichols remarked that the Gospel reading of the day, centered on the Holy Family’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem, serves as a poignant metaphor for our journey of life.

United States 

These themes also resonated across the United States as bishops opened the Jubilee Year in their dioceses.

In some dioceses, the opening rite preceded a procession of the faithful to or within the cathedral for Mass. The procession was to include a jubilee cross, a cross of significance for the local church designated for a special liturgical role during the Jubilee Year.

Ukraine

The opening of the Jubilee Year was also marked in several Catholic churches across Ukraine against the backdrop of the ongoing bombing and shelling of Ukrainian cities by Russia.

His Beatitude  Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Head of the Greek Catholic Church presided over the solemn liturgy in the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv. In his sermon he reminded the faithful  that  “today the hope of Ukraine is Jesus Christ.” “Christian hope,” the Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halyč remarked in a Message released ahead the Holy  Year, “is the secret of the stability and invincibility of our people, who, in the midst of war, know how to defend freedom at the cost of their own lives, dream of a better future, and build a better world today for their children.”