Three Kings Parades across Poland Jan. 6 broke records in the Jubilee Year as 2 million people marched down the streets of 905 cities and towns in an initiative that spread abroad from the European country with vibrant popular faith.
Jubilee Year
More than half a million pilgrims crossed the threshold of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica in the first two weeks after Pope Francis opened it.
Bishops worldwide celebrated the opening of the 2025 Holy Year Dec. 29 with Masses in their cathedrals and co-cathedrals to mark the jubilee, which is themed “Pilgrims of Hope.”
Wearing red vestments for the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, Pope Francis knocked on the door of the church in Rome’s Rebibbia prison complex and walked over its threshold.
Pope Francis has called on all nations to eliminate the death penalty, to divert a fixed percentage of arms spending to a global fund to fight hunger and climate change, and to cancel the international debt of developing nations as concrete ways to usher in a new era of hope.