Jubilee for Schools 2025
A Jubilee, or Holy Year, has been celebrated in the Catholic Church since the year 1300, in recent times every twenty-five years. It is an invitation for a special encounter with Jesus, the “door” of our salvation. The theme of Jubilee 2025 is Hope: the hope that comes from knowing we are loved by God, the hope we can bring to those in most need, and the hope we can bring to our common home, the earth.
Pope Francis has called upon the Church to read the “signs of the time” to see the goodness present in the world. We are not blind to the evil in our world, but we look first for where God is active and where we can help to build up the Kingdom of God “where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony” (1).
The Holy Year is an opportunity to offer “signs of hope” to our world: hope for peace, hope for the transmission of life, hope for those who are in prison, hope for the sick, for the young, for migrants, for the elderly, for those who are poor. The goods of the earth “are not destined for a privileged few, but for everyone” (2). No one should go without what they need for a dignified life, no one should live without hope.
The Jubilee will begin when Pope Francis opens the Holy Door of the Basilica of St Peter in the Vatican on 24 December 2024 and will end with the closing of the same Holy Door on 6 January 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany of Lord. In England and Wales, three agencies of the Bishops’ Conference - the Catholic Education Service, CAFOD, and Caritas Social Action Network, with support from CYMFed - will lead on Jubilee for Schools.
Since the Jubilee begins on 24 December 2024 when the schools will be on their Christmas break, we will organise a Jubilee launch for schools on Friday 24 January 2025. Please put this important date in your school calendar. We will be communicating with all Catholic schools and colleges in England and Wales with more details about how you can get involved in the Jubilee launch. Sign up for more information on the website: www.jubilee-schools.org.uk
There will be other events to look out for in 2025, including an opportunity for school and college communities to make a Jubilee Pledge. This will be a commitment to a “sign of hope”, a project to advance justice and harmony locally, nationally and internationally. We would encourage schools to work with their local parishes and consider making a joint Jubilee Pledge to bring renewal to our world. Resources to guide schools and parishes on how to work towards a pledge will be available well before the launch date.
We will also prepare resources for multi academy trusts to review their Vision and Mission in the light of the inspiration of the Jubilee Year. This will be ready in the form of a toolkit for the launch on 24 January 2025. We will prepare other resources for celebrations of the word and liturgies in school. A full calendar of events and resources will be ready for schools by September 2024.
Jubilee is rooted in an ancient appeal “for acts of clemency and liberation that enable new beginnings” (3). For the people of Israel in the Old Testament, the fiftieth year was a special year to re-set injustices, “You shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Leviticus 25: 10). The prophet Isaiah called this “the year of the Lord’s favour” (Isaiah 61: 2). Jesus, at the beginning of his public ministry, presented himself as the fulfilment of the year of the Lord’s favour. He proclaimed good news to the poor, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed (Luke 4: 18-36).
In Catholic Social Teaching, integral human development is an important concept, that is the flourishing of the whole person and all people. In other words, “liberation from everything that oppresses people” (4). In the Jubilee Year, Catholic communities are called upon to be agents of justice and peace, to act where human beings are tied down by poverty, loneliness, exclusion, discrimination, suffering of any kind, to restore dignity and hope and to challenge the causes of poverty.
The Jubilee is also an invitation for personal renewal and conversion, for re-setting our relationships with God, our neighbour and the earth, our common home. These relationships are like a life-giving circuit. When one link is missing the circuit is broken. Through the sacrament of Confession and practises of reconciliation, we can be renewed, we can find happiness in a fulfilled life.
Pope Francis reminds us that for Christians, happiness is not some fleeting pleasure that keeps us longing for more, but rather, “We aspire to a happiness that is definitively found in the one thing that can bring us fulfilment, which is love. Thus we will be able to say even now: I am loved, therefore I exist; and I will live forever in the love that does not disappoint” (5).
For the young people in our schools, for the rest of society, this is the message of Jubilee 2025. Life is not hopeless, despite its challenges. Life is the gift of a loving God who calls us to love, peace and justice in this life and eternal communion with him in the next.
You will find the formal announcement of Jubilee for Schools in a letter from Rt. Rev. Marcus Stock, CES Chairman and Bishop of Leeds: https://catholiceducation.org.uk/about-us/news-items/item/1004214-jubilee-year-2025-pilgrims-of-hope-a-letter-from-the-ces-chairman-the-rt-rev-marcus-stock
1/ Pope Francis, Spes Non Confundit, Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025, 25
2/ Ibid., 16
3/ Ibid., 10
4/ Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 82
5/ Spes non Confundit, 21