Jubilee 2025
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Proclamation, Opening, and Closing DatesThe 2025 Jubilee was officially proclaimed on Thursday, May 9, 2024, by Pope Francis, who presided over a formal reading of the Jubilee’s papal bull of indiction.
The papal bull, titled “Spes Non Confudit,” meaning “Hope Does Not Disappoint,” declares that the Jubilee Year will:- Officially begin on Christmas Eve 2024
- End in dioceses throughout the world on December 28, 2025
- Officially close in Rome on the solemnity of Epiphany on January 6, 2026.
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The Origin of the Jubilee Year
In the opening verses of Leviticus 25, the Lord informs Moses of the Israelites' future obligation to observe a year of rest during the seventh year of inhabiting the Promised Land. This period, known as the Sabbatical or Sabbath Year, required they neither sow, harvest, nor prune their fields. This observance was to be repeated every seven years.
The directive to celebrate a Jubilee Year is described in the remaining 48 verses of chapter 25. This year of celebration and restoration occurred after seven cycles of seven years, or every 50 years, placing the Jubilee Year immediately after a Sabbatical Year. Like the Sabbatical Year, the Jubilee Year required that the land be allowed to rest once again, with no sowing, harvesting, or pruning. The Lord promised to “bestow such blessings” upon His people during the sixth year—those years that are multiples of six—“that there will then be crop enough for three years.”
During the Jubilee Year, indentured Israelites were to be freed, debts forgiven, and land that had been sold to repay debts was to be restored to its ancestral owner. These regulations were meant to preserve social and economic equilibrium, preventing cycles of intergenerational poverty among God’s people and creating what could be considered a utopia. As Dr. John Bergsma explains, “Since it recurred usually once in a lifetime, the impoverished Israelite—or at least the one projected by the text—would spend most of his life in anticipation of this event of restoration.” Dr. Bergsma includes the phrase “at least the one projected by the text” because, while there are subtle references to the Jubilee in the Old Testament beyond Leviticus 25, there are no actual narrative stories about its observance.
The word jubilee comes from the Hebrew word yobel (jobel), meaning "ram's horn." A shofar, a bugle-like instrument made from a ram’s horn, was used to announce the start of the Jubilee every 50 years.