Pope Francis Opens the Sacred Portal at Vatican for Jubilee Year 2025 – Special Absolution From Sins During Jubilee Year

Pope Francis opened the Holy Doors or Sacred Portal on Christmas Eve at The Vatican.

This will mark the start of the 2025 Jubilee, a year of forgiveness, reconciliation, and spiritual renewal.

Catholics who confess their sins during this time receive absolution, freeing them from eternal or spiritual punishment.

This year the socialist Pope Francis will ask “rich” countries to forgive the debt of “poor” countries.

Via ICN: Pope Francis has called on affluent countries to “forgive the debts of countries that will never be able to repay them”, which he declared is “more than a matter of generosity, a matter of justice”.

The AP has more on the Jubilee year.

Pope Francis on Tuesday formally inaugurates the 2025 Holy Year, reviving an ancient church tradition encouraging the faithful to make pilgrimages to Rome, amid new security fears following a Christmas market attack in Germany.

At the start of Christmas Eve Mass, Francis will push open the Holy Door on St. Peter’s Basilica, which will stay open throughout the year to allow the estimated 32 million pilgrims projected to visit Rome to pass through.

The first Holy Year was called in 1300, and in recent times they are generally celebrated every 25 to 50 years. Pilgrims who participate can obtain “indulgences” — the centuries-old feature of the Catholic Church related to the forgiveness of sins that roughly amounts to a “get out of Purgatory free” card.

The last regular Jubilee was in 2000, when St. John Paul II ushered in the church’s third millennium.