On December 24, as Catholics celebrate Christmas Eve and the end of the Advent season, they will also turn their eyes to Rome. Pope Francis will pass through the Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica, marking the official commencement of the 2025 jubilee year. This jubilee's theme, "Pilgrims of Hope," is meant to offer a message of comfort to victims of international warfare, the pandemic, and climate change. Between 30 and 40 million people are expected to come to Rome in 2025, more than double the annual tourism rate. Literally following in Pope Francis's footsteps, the millions of pilgrims passing through the Holy Doors and making a penitential confession will partake in a Catholic ritual that stretches back more than seven hundred years. While the jubilee is a medieval tradition, and the Church largely seeks to replicate the first Catholic jubilee in 1300, the upcoming 2025 jubilee also presents some new events that distinguishes it from its predecessors.

The Christian jubilee has its origins in the Jewish tradition, which decrees that a jubilee (yovel in Hebrew) shall be held every fifty years (Leviticus 25:8-13), and that "in it you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself, nor gather from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat of its increase out of the field. In this Year of Jubilee each of you shall return to his property." To begin this special year, the shofar horn was blown at Yom Kippur, slaves were freed, and debts were forgiven.

Though the practice of Christian pilgrimage had been a popular aspect of medieval religious devotion, the idea of a universal jubilee involving a pilgrimage did not crystalize until 1299. In a time of ongoing disease and warfare, pilgrims went in droves to Rome at Christmas that year, seeking mercy and God's blessings at one of the most sacred places in Christianity. Moved by the presence of the pilgrims, Pope Boniface VIII published a papal bull Antiquorum habet fida relatio ("There exists an ancient tradition worthy of faith") on February 22, 1300, that established basic parameters of a one-time year of pilgrimage and penitence. Though he did not use the word "jubilee" in the document, Boniface promised the forgiveness of sins to those who made the pilgrimage. Traveling pilgrims had to visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul every day for fifteen days and make a confession in order to receive a full indulgence (those who lived in Rome could also do this, but they had to visit the basilicas daily for a month straight).

It is estimated that in that first jubilee, over two hundred thousand pilgrims made the journey to Rome. Their numbers included artists Cimabue and Giotto, banker and diplomat Giovanni Villani, and Dante Alighieri, who wrote about it in his Divine Comedy. In describing the jubilee, Villani noted it was "the most marvellous thing that was ever seen, for throughout the year, without a break, there were in Rome, besides the inhabitants of the city, 200,000 pilgrims...and all was well ordered, and without tumult."

The 1300 jubilee was so successful that Christians clamored for the Church to plan another one, even though Boniface had intended that a jubilee should only occur every hundred years. He couldn't have anticipated how the crises of the fourteenth century would change that. Devastating amounts of rain in the spring of 1315 led to the Great Famine (1315-1317), which plunged Europe into an agricultural and financial crisis. Shortly after, the Black Death (1347-1350) ravaged Europe, killing between a third and half of the population, while the Hundred Years' War between England and France (1337-1453) had just begun. The Catholic Church itself was also in crisis, as the papacy had moved from Rome to Avignon, France.

These global crises led Pope Clement VI to issue a papal bull in 1343 that called for another jubilee year to be celebrated in 1350. The first jubilee brought pilgrims to Rome to visit the Basilica of St. Peter and Paul, but over time, pilgrims visited the Basilicas of St. John Lateran and Maria Maggiore as well. Today it is customary that in order to "complete" the as a pilgrim, one must go to Rome, visit all four major basilicas, and make a full confession. In doing so, the pilgrim receives a plenary indulgence, a complete forgiveness of sins. (This is not to be confused with the much-maligned medieval practice of selling indulgences -- the idea that one could pay for the forgiveness of sins without performing penance.)

There have been over twenty Catholic jubilees since 1300, but they haven't occurred on a regular schedule. In 1389, Urban VI chose to set the jubilee cycle to every thirty-three years to commemorate the number of years in Jesus' life. But eager pilgrims flocked en masse to Rome in 1400, and Pope Boniface IX granted a special indulgence to those who made the pilgrimage.