Pope Leo XIV closes the Holy Door at St Peter's to end Jubilee year

Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday closed out the Vatican's 2025 Holy Year by denouncing today's consumerist and anti-foreigner sentiment, capping a Jubilee that saw some 33 million pilgrims flock to Rome and a historic transition from one American pontiff to another.

With cardinals and diplomats looking on, Pope Leo XIV kneeled down in prayer on the stone floor at the threshold of the Holy Door of St Peter's Basilica.

He then stood up and pulled the two doors shut, symbolically concluding the rarest of Jubilees: one that late Pope Francis opened in December 2024, continued during his funeral and the conclave, and then was closed by Pope Francis' successor a year later.

Only once before, in 1700, has a Holy Year been opened by one pope and closed by another.

Tuesday's ceremony, at the start of Mass celebrating the feast of Epiphany, capped a dizzying year of special audiences, Masses and meetings that dominated Leo's first months as pontiff and in many ways put his own agenda on hold.

As if to signal his pontificate now can begin in earnest, Leo has summoned the world's cardinals to the Vatican for two days of meetings starting Wednesday to discuss governing the 1.4-billion-strong Catholic Church.

On the agenda is the issue of the liturgy, suggesting Leo is diving headfirst into the divisions within the church over the celebration of the old Latin Mass.

In his homily Tuesday, Pope Leo XIV said the Jubilee year had invited all Christians to reflect on the Biblical teachings to welcome the stranger and resist "the flattery and seduction of those in power."

"Around us, a distorted economy tries to profit from everything," he said. "Let us ask ourselves: has the Jubilee taught us to flee from this type of efficiency that reduces everything to a product and human beings to consumers?"

"After this year, will we be better able to recognize a pilgrim in the visitor, a seeker in the stranger, a neighbour in the foreigner, and fellow travelers in those who are different?" the pontiff asked.

He echoed the theme in a special Epiphany prayer delivered from the basilica loggia to a rain-soaked piazza below.

As thousands of people huddled under colourful umbrellas and ponchos, Pope Leo XIV recalled that traditionally, Jubilees have included appeals for peace and "a redistribution of the land and its resources" to those in need.

"In the place of inequality, may there be fairness, and may the industry of war be replaced by the craft of peace," he said.

For the Vatican, a Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition in which the faithful make pilgrimages to Rome every 25 years to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and receive indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins if they pass through the Holy Door.

For Rome, it is a chance to take advantage of public funds, in this case some €4 billion ($4.3 billion), to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of neglect and bring it up to modern, European standards.

The Vatican on Monday reported that 33,475,369 pilgrims had participated in the Jubilee The organiser, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, acknowledged the figure was only a rough estimate and could include double-counting.

At a press conference, neither he nor Italian officials provided a breakdown of Holy Year pilgrims from the overall tourist figures for the same period.

Rome's relationship with Jubilees dates to 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated the first Holy Year in what historians say marked the definitive designation of Rome as the centre of Christianity. Even then, the number of pilgrims was so significant that Dante referred to them in his "Inferno."

Massive public works projects have long accompanied Holy Years, including the creation of the Sistine Chapel, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV for the Jubilee of 1475, and the big Vatican garage for the 2000 Jubilee under St John Paul II.

Some works have been controversial, such as the construction of Via della Conciliazione, the broad boulevard leading to St Peter's Square. An entire neighbourhood was razed to make way for the 1950 Jubilee.

The main public works project for the 2025 Jubilee was an extension of that boulevard: a pedestrian piazza along the Tiber linking Via della Conciliazione to the nearby Castel Sant'Angelo, with the major road that had separated them diverted to an underground tunnel.

Pope Leo XIV has already announced that the next Jubilee will be in 2033, to commemorate what Christians believe was the death and resurrection of Christ in the year 33.