Every 25 years, the Pope opens five “sacred portals” at Christmas. The portals, or doors, are meant to symbolize the doorway to salvation. The tradition goes back all the way to 1300, but this year’s door opening ceremony will have a first: one of the doors opened will be in a prison. The Holy Doors, located in the Vatican, are sealed with bricks and remain closed during their 25 year interim, with local churches opening their own designated Holy Doors in sync with the Vatican’s. The ceremony will kick off the Catholic church’s 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope. The Pope will begin opening doors on December 24^th, with the opening of the door at St. Peter’s Basilica. On the 26^th, the Pope will open the door at Rome’s Rebibbia prison. The ceremony will then continue with the opening of doors at St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul Outside the Walls on December 29, January 1, and January 5 respectively.

Pope Francis addressed his reasons for opening a prison door in a statement. “In the jubilee year we are called to be tangible signs of hope for so many brothers and sisters who live in conditions of hardship. I think of prisoners who, deprived of their freedom, daily feel the harshness of detention and its restrictions, lack of affection, and, in more than a few cases, lack of respect,” he said. “I propose to the governments that during the jubilee year they take initiatives that restore hope, forms of amnesty or pardon that help people to regain confidence in themselves and in society, ways of reintegration into the community.” Pope John Paul II wrote of the doors’ significance in 2000. “To focus upon the door is to recall the responsibility of every believer to cross its threshold. To pass through that door means to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; it is to strengthen faith in him in order to live the new life which he has given us. It is a decision which presumes freedom to choose and also the courage to leave something behind, in the knowledge that what is gained is divine life.”

Catholics throughout the world will be encouraged to make pilgrimages during 2025. The door to St. Peter’s Basilica will remain open until January 6, 2026. The other doors will be closed December 28, 2025. “The coming Jubilee will thus be a Holy Year marked by the hope that does not fade, our hope in God,” concluded the Pope. “May it help us to recover the confident trust that we require, in the Church and in society, in our interpersonal relationships, in international relations, and in our task of promoting the dignity of all persons and respect for God’s gift of creation. May the witness of believers be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promises.”