Pope announces Year of Prayer ahead of 2025 Jubilee

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Source: Vatican News

Pope Francis has inaugurated a Year of Prayer ahead of the 2025 Jubilee, calling on the faithful "to intensify prayer to prepare us to live well this event of grace and to experience the power of God's hope."

In remarks after the Angelus on Sunday, the Holy Father explained that the Year of Prayer is dedicated "to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer, prayer in personal life, in the life of the Church, prayer in the world."

He added that the Dicastery for Evangelization will be preparing materials to assist in celebrating the Year.

2025 will also be the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (325 AD)

Jubilees this century

On March 13, 2015, Pope Francis announced a special jubilee on the theme of mercy which was held from December 8, 2015, until November 20, 2016, and formally convoked the holy year through the papal bull of indiction, Misericordiae Vultus (The Face of Mercy), on April 11, 2015.

Pope John Paul II announced a Great Jubilee for the year 2000 with his apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (As the Third Millennium Approaches) of November 10, 1994. In this writing, he called for a three-year preparation period leading up to the opening of the Great Jubilee in December 1999. The first year, 1997, was to be dedicated to meditation on Jesus, the second to the Holy Spirit, and the third to God the Father. This Jubilee was especially marked by a simplification of the rites and the requirements for achieving the indulgence, as well as a huge effort to involve other Christians in the celebration.

Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox Church were invited to celebrate the jubilee together with Catholics as a sign of ecumenism. Furthermore, special jubilees were invoked for various groups within the Church, such as children, athletes, politicians, and actors. World Youth Day, celebrated in Rome in August, brought over two million young people together.

The jubilee was closed by the Pope on January 6, 2001, by the closing of the holy door of St Peter's Basilica and the promulgation of the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (Upon Entering the New Millennium), which outlined the Pope's vision for the future of the church.