Jubilee shows God’s plan is for ‘little ones’ says Leo at end of 2025

‘The world moves forward driven by the hopes of so many simple people, unknown but not to God, who believe in a better tomorrow because they know the future is in His hands.’

The Virgin Mary rebukes those that seek “to win trade, territory, zones of influence”, the Pope said as he marked the end of 2025.

Preaching in St Peter’s on New Year’s Eve, at the First Vespers of the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God celebrated on 1 January, Pope Leo said she expressed a vision of God’s plan as “free and liberating, peaceful, faithful”, in contrast with schemes “cloaked in hypocritical talk, in ideological proclamations, in false religious motives”.

The Mother of God, he said, following the Magnificat, “shows that with the power of his hand the Most High scatters the plots of the proud, deposes the might from their thrones and raises up the humble, he fills the hands of the hungry with good things and leaves the rich emptyhanded”.

“God loves to hope with the hearts of little ones, and he does this by including them in his plan for salvation,” he said. 

“And in fact the world moves forward driven by the hopes of so many simple people, unknown but not to God, who despite everything believe in a better tomorrow because they know that the future is in the hands of Him who offers them the greatest hope.”

St Peter was such an unknown, Leo continued, and it was because of his faith that “pilgrims from every part of the world come to renew their faith” at his tomb in the basilica, particularly during the Holy Year. The papal household reported this week that almost 3.2 million people attended liturgies and audiences at the Vatican in 2025.

“The Jubilee is a great sign of a new world, renewed and reconciled according to God’s plan,” the Pope said, with “a particular place” for the city of Rome: “Not for its glories, not for its power, but because it was where Peter and Paul and so many other martyrs shed their blood for Christ.”

Rome must be a “city of Jubilee” in its treatment of “children, of the lonely and frail old, of families that have the greatest difficulty getting by, of men and women who have come from far away in search of a dignified life”, Leo said. After the liturgy and the singing of the Te Deum, he visited the crib in St Peter’s Square and spontaneously greeted the crowd gathered nearby.

At a Mass on 27 December after the closing of the Holy Door in the Basilica of St John Lateran, its archpriest Cardinal Baldassare Reina said the Church must “help the Lord to find fulfilment in a city where many have lost hope”.

Cardinal Reina, the vicar of the Diocese of Rome which has the basilica as its cathedral, said the loss of hope came from a system “that does not live up to the highest vocation of politics, which is to remove obstacles so that everyone may have equal opportunity to fulfil themselves, give shape to their dreams, substance to their dignity, through work and fair wages, having a home, and being defended and cared for in their fragility”.

He said the congregation – which included the Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri and other city dignitaries – must overcome “every form of inertia, so that the Lord may be encountered” in all of Rome’s “social and existential” places.

St John Lateran was the second of Rome’s four basilicas to close its Holy Door, after the Basilica of St Mary Major on Christmas Day where Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas presided. “What is being closed is not divine grace, but a special time for the Church,” Makrickas said, “while what remains open forever is the heart of merciful God.”

Cardinal James Harvey closed the Holy Door in the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls on 28 January. Pope Leo will close the Holy Door in St Peter’s on 6 January, the Feast of the Epiphany, concluding the Jubilee.

Pope Francis opens Holy Door to begin the Year of Jubilee

A pilgrim in the Eternal City on the Jubilee of Consecrated Life

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