Jubilee in the Catholic Church

Based on Wikipedia: Jubilee in the Catholic Church

In the year 1299, as Christmas approached, something unexpected happened in Rome. Thousands upon thousands of pilgrims began streaming into the city—not because anyone had called them there, but because a rumor was spreading through medieval Europe. The whisper went something like this: a hundred years ago, something miraculous had happened in Rome, some great forgiveness of sins, and perhaps it was about to happen again.

The Pope at the time, Boniface VIII, was puzzled. He hadn't announced anything. But the pilgrims kept coming, including elderly travelers who swore they remembered their parents speaking of a similar gathering a century before. Boniface, being a practical man as well as a spiritual one, decided to give the people what they wanted. On February 22, 1300, he issued a decree offering "the most full pardon of all their sins" to anyone who made the journey to Rome and visited the great churches.

He never used the word "jubilee" in his official proclamation. But everyone else did. And so began a tradition that continues to this day—the Catholic Holy Year, a time when the faithful believe they can receive complete forgiveness for their sins by making a pilgrimage to Rome.

The Ancient Roots of Forgiveness

The concept didn't spring from nowhere. It reaches back thousands of years to ancient Israel, where the Book of Leviticus prescribed something remarkable: every fiftieth year, all debts would be forgiven, all slaves would be freed, and the land would rest. The Hebrew word was "yovel," likely referring to the ram's horn trumpet that announced the year's beginning. From this we get our English word "jubilee."

The number fifty held mystical significance. It came after seven cycles of seven years—forty-nine years of ordinary time, then a year of extraordinary grace. This mathematical poetry wasn't lost on medieval Christians, who were deeply fond of finding symbolic meaning in numbers.

When the body of Thomas Becket, the archbishop murdered in Canterbury Cathedral, was ceremonially moved to a new shrine in 1220, it happened to be exactly fifty years after his death. The preacher at that occasion, Cardinal Stephen Langton, made sure everyone understood this wasn't coincidence. The number fifty, he declared, was "the number of remission"—a fact that "every reader of the sacred page is aware of."

Whether every reader was actually aware of this is another matter. But the idea had taken hold.

The First Jubilee and Its Unexpected Success

Boniface VIII intended his 1300 jubilee to be a once-in-a-century event. Visit the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, he decreed—Romans for thirty consecutive days, visitors for fifteen—and receive complete forgiveness. The response exceeded anyone's expectations.

Among the pilgrims who made the journey that year were some of history's most famous names. Giotto was there, the painter who was revolutionizing art with his naturalistic human figures. His teacher Cimabue came too. The chronicler Giovanni Villani walked those same streets, gathering material for his great history of Florence. And Dante Alighieri, who would later describe the event in his Divine Comedy, witnessed the crowds crossing the bridge of Sant'Angelo—so many people that they had to be organized into two streams walking in opposite directions, like modern highway traffic.

The jubilee worked, in other words. It worked almost too well.

The Schedule Problem

A hundred years between jubilees presented an obvious difficulty: most people would never see one. If you were born the year after a jubilee, you'd be ninety-nine before the next one came around—assuming you lived that long, which in medieval Europe was extraordinarily unlikely.

By the middle of the fourteenth century, pressure was building to shorten the interval. Saint Bridget of Sweden lobbied for it. So did the poet Petrarch. In 1343, Pope Clement VI—who was ruling the Church from Avignon, France, during the period when the papacy had relocated there—agreed to hold jubilees every fifty years instead, returning to the biblical model.

The 1350 jubilee went forward, though Clement himself stayed in France and sent a cardinal to represent him. The faithful were now required to visit not just two but three major churches: Saint Peter's, Saint Paul's Outside the Walls, and the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran.

But fifty years still seemed too long. Pope Urban VI proposed a new calculation: every thirty-three years, matching both Christ's lifespan and the average human life expectancy of the era. Under this system, jubilees were held in 1390 and 1400. A fourth church, Saint Mary Major, was added to the pilgrimage route.

The 1400 jubilee wasn't even supposed to happen. Pope Boniface IX hadn't announced one. But pilgrims arrived anyway—echoing the spontaneous gathering of 1299—and the Pope decided to grant the indulgence regardless. It proved to be a devastating decision. The crowds brought plague with them, and at the height of the epidemic, between six hundred and eight hundred people were dying in Rome every single day.

Finding the Right Rhythm

The Church kept experimenting with the schedule. A jubilee in 1423, then another in 1450, then finally in 1470 Pope Paul II established what would become the standard: every twenty-five years. This meant that most people could realistically hope to participate in at least one jubilee during their lifetime, possibly two or even three.

Paul II also introduced a crucial innovation. Not everyone could travel to Rome, after all. The journey was expensive, dangerous, and time-consuming. So the Pope permitted foreigners to gain the jubilee indulgence by visiting designated churches in their own countries and contributing money toward the ongoing wars against the Ottoman Empire. The spiritual benefit remained the same; only the logistics changed.

This was, in essence, the medieval Church recognizing that accessibility matters.

Triumph and Tragedy

The jubilees of 1450 and 1475 drew enormous crowds. To understand what this meant, you need to picture fifteenth-century Rome—not the grand baroque city we know today, but a largely rural area enclosed by ancient walls, home to perhaps thirty thousand people who made their living mainly from raising livestock.

Wolves roamed the Vatican gardens.

The population clustered along the Tiber River, with separate villages surrounding the major churches. Saint John Lateran had its little community; Saint Mary Major had another. The grand buildings of ancient Rome stood in ruins, their marble stripped for new construction, their halls home to squatters and scavengers.

Into this modest setting, according to contemporary accounts, forty thousand pilgrims arrived every day during the 1450 jubilee. The infrastructure simply couldn't handle it.

On one terrible day, panic broke out on the bridge of Sant'Angelo—the same bridge where Dante had observed the orderly two-way traffic in 1300. Nearly two hundred people were trampled to death. The disaster prompted major changes: streets were widened, charitable organizations were established to house and feed pilgrims, and the famous Archconfraternity of the Holy Trinity was founded by Saint Philip Neri specifically to care for jubilee visitors.

Pope Nicholas V, meanwhile, used the wealth that pilgrims brought to transform Rome itself. He began converting the medieval city into a Renaissance capital, founded the Vatican Library, and permanently moved the papal headquarters from Saint John Lateran to the Vatican on the west bank of the Tiber. The Castel Sant'Angelo was rebuilt, new fortifications went up, and Rome began its long transformation into the city of domes and fountains that tourists visit today.

But even as Rome grew grander, the jubilee of 1450 brought plague along with prosperity. Members of the papal court died from the infection. The Pope himself fled to the Apennine Mountains to escape.

The Holy Doors

In 1500, Pope Alexander VI introduced what would become the most distinctive feature of jubilee celebrations: the Holy Doors. Each of the four major basilicas has a special door that remains sealed—literally bricked up—between jubilee years. At the start of each Holy Year, the Pope ceremonially opens these doors, and pilgrims enter through them to gain the indulgence. At the jubilee's end, the doors are sealed again.

The original ritual involved a certain amount of drama. The Pope would strike the sealed door with a silver hammer, and workers would cause the wall to collapse. This made for impressive theater but proved hazardous—bystanders were sometimes injured by falling debris. By the Great Jubilee of 2000, Pope John Paul II had simplified the ceremony considerably, simply pushing the doors open with his hands.

Traditionally, the Pope opens the door of Saint Peter's personally while delegating cardinals to open the other three. John Paul II broke with this tradition, choosing to open all four doors himself—a gesture that emphasized the personal nature of the papal role in these celebrations.

Turbulent Times

The jubilee of 1525 opened just as the Protestant Reformation was tearing Christianity apart. Martin Luther had posted his Ninety-Five Theses eight years earlier, and the very concept of indulgences—the spiritual benefits that jubilees offered—was at the heart of his critique. For Luther, the idea that the Church could grant forgiveness in exchange for pilgrimages and donations represented exactly what was wrong with Roman Catholicism.

The Church pressed on regardless. The 1575 jubilee, during the pontificate of Gregory XIII, drew three hundred thousand visitors. The 1625 celebration was hampered by wars in northern Italy, prompting Pope Urban VIII to suspend indulgences outside Rome in an attempt to lure the faithful to the city. When that didn't work as hoped, he declared extraordinary jubilees in 1628 and 1629 specifically to pray for peace—and incidentally to bring pilgrims and their money to Rome.

By the eighteenth century, the jubilee tradition had settled into a predictable rhythm. Pope Clement XI established the hospice of San Michele a Ripa to shelter pilgrims. Pope Benedict XIV oversaw the 1750 jubilee, which featured the famous preacher Leonard of Port Maurice setting up the Stations of the Cross inside the ruins of the Colosseum—a devotional practice that persists in Catholic churches worldwide.

Interruptions and Adaptations

The orderly twenty-five-year schedule proved impossible to maintain through the political upheavals of the nineteenth century. Napoleon's domination of Europe prevented Pope Pius VII from proclaiming the jubilee of 1800. The 1825 celebration went forward successfully, drawing more than half a million pilgrims, but 1850 was impossible—Pope Pius IX was in exile, driven from Rome by republican revolutionaries.

By 1875, the situation had changed again. Italian troops had captured Rome in 1870, ending the Pope's temporal authority and effectively making him a prisoner in the Vatican. Pius IX announced a jubilee, but it was a subdued affair. The holy doors didn't open. The ceremonies lacked their traditional grandeur. Most pilgrims came not to gain an indulgence but to pay homage to a Pope they saw as a martyr to Italian nationalism.

This pattern continued into 1900, when Leo XIII presided over a jubilee "shorn of much of its splendor" by the Pope's continued self-confinement within Vatican walls.

The Modern Era

The twentieth century brought new energy to the jubilee tradition. Celebrations were held in 1925 and 1950 on the regular schedule, but the Church also began proclaiming extraordinary jubilees for special occasions. In 1933, a jubilee commemorated the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of Christ's death and resurrection. In 1966, a special jubilee marked the close of the Second Vatican Council. In 1983, another extraordinary year honored the 1,950th anniversary of the Crucifixion.

Pope Pius XII used the 1950 jubilee to introduce a new anthem for Vatican City. He also proclaimed the first Marian Year in 1954, dedicated to the Virgin Mary—a kind of minor jubilee that would be repeated by John Paul II in 1987.

The Great Jubilee of 2000 represented the most ambitious celebration in centuries. John Paul II announced it years in advance, calling for a three-year preparation period. The first preparatory year would focus on Jesus, the second on the Holy Spirit, the third on God the Father. The Pope simplified the requirements for gaining the indulgence and made unprecedented efforts to involve Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians in the celebration.

Special jubilees were proclaimed for specific groups: children, athletes, politicians, actors. World Youth Day, held in Rome that August, brought over two million young people together. The jubilee opened on Christmas Eve 1999 and closed on January 6, 2001, when John Paul II sealed the holy door of Saint Peter's and issued his vision for the Church's future in a document titled "Upon Entering the New Millennium."

The Jubilee of Mercy and Beyond

Pope Francis proclaimed an unexpected Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy from December 2015 to November 2016. Unlike ordinary jubilees, which follow the twenty-five-year schedule, extraordinary jubilees can be called at any time for any reason the Pope deems significant. Francis chose mercy as his theme—the idea that God's forgiveness is freely available to all who seek it.

The most recent ordinary jubilee began on Christmas Eve 2024, designated by Francis as the Jubilee Year of Hope. It also marks the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the gathering in 325 A.D. that established many of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, including the Nicene Creed that Catholics and many other Christians still recite today.

For those who cannot travel to Rome, the Church has long provided alternatives. Catholic parishes around the world can designate their own doors for jubilee purposes, carrying the same spiritual benefits as a pilgrimage to the Eternal City. The adaptation that Paul II introduced in 1470—recognizing that not everyone can make the journey—remains central to how jubilees function.

What a Jubilee Means

At its core, a jubilee is about forgiveness. Not just forgiveness of sins—confession handles that—but forgiveness of the punishment due to sin. Catholic theology draws a distinction between guilt, which confession removes, and temporal punishment, which remains even after forgiveness. An indulgence reduces or eliminates that remaining punishment.

This is, admittedly, a complex concept. Think of it this way: if you break your neighbor's window, apologizing removes the moral fault. But you still need to pay for a new window. Indulgences address that second part—the consequences that linger even after reconciliation.

A jubilee offers a plenary indulgence, meaning complete removal of temporal punishment, to those who fulfill the requirements: confession, communion, prayers for the Pope's intentions, and visits to the designated churches. It's meant to be a fresh start, a clean slate, a new beginning.

It's also meant to be a time of reconciliation more broadly—between enemies, between estranged family members, between communities in conflict. The ancient Israelite jubilee freed slaves and forgave debts. The Christian version aims for something similar: a reset, a restoration, a return to right relationship with God and neighbor.

Whether you believe in the spiritual mechanics or not, there's something compelling about a tradition that has brought millions of people together for over seven centuries, all seeking the same thing: a chance to start over, to be forgiven, to hope.

The pilgrims who walked to Rome in 1299, following rumors of a blessing their grandparents might have received, weren't so different from the young people who gathered for World Youth Day in 2000, or from those walking through the Holy Doors today. They all came looking for something that transcends the ordinary—a moment when time resets, burdens lift, and the future opens up fresh and clean.

That's what a jubilee promises. That's why people keep coming.