From the triumphalism that marked the Catholic Church’s celebration of the Great Jubilee of 2000 to the upcoming jubilee that will take place in our present “triste epoque”
Once the second assembly of the “Synodal Process” is concluded in October 2024, the next big event the Vatican will be focusing on is the “Jubilee of Hope” in 2025. Preparations are already underway for what looks to be a very Rome-centered Holy Year. It will begin in December 2024 and conclude on Epiphany in January 2026.
This is the first Holy Year since the Great Jubilee of 2000 and it comes nearly a decade after the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy of 2015-2016. The person responsible for preparing it is Archbishop Rino Fisichella, one of the two pro-prefects of the Dicastery for Evangelization, a position he got from Benedict XVI in 2010 as president of the now-defunct Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. Fisichella, who will be 72 in August, was also a member of the central committee of the Great Jubilee of 2000 and vice-president (under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) of its theological-historical commission.
Among other positions this former Gregorian University professor held was serving as chaplain to Italy’s Parliament from 1995-2010. This made him one of the country’s most important prelates entrusted with building an entente between the right-wing coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi and the pontificate of Benedict. Now that the Italian government is in the hands of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Berlusconi’s successor on the right, Fisichella appears — at least to some — to be the right man in the right place at the right time.
A big money event between the sacred and profane
Coordinating jubilee preparations between Vatican and Italian authorities is important because building and updating infrastructure in order to accommodate the 30-40 million people who are expected come to Rome means that lot of money will be changing hands. A large part of that will come from Italian taxpayers but funds will also come indirectly from the European Union. The Holy Year is always a typically Catholic mix of the sacred and profane. This has been the case since the very first jubilee in the year 1300, a very Roman Catholic institution that survived the Protestant Reformation and got a boost from 19th-century ultramontanism, which promoted supreme papal authority and the Vatican’s role in matters of spirituality and governance.
This tourist/business aspect of jubilees is nothing new. What is new is that today we live in a world that has changed significantly since even the past two jubilees. Jubilee 2025 will be quite different than the “Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy” that Pope Francis called less than three years into his pontificate, the most energetic phase of his time at the helm of the Church. The sexual abuse crisis had not yet hit the pontificate in a way that it has since 2018.The mood among Catholics at the time of Jubilee 2025 will be even more different from the “Great Jubilee” of 2000, which showcased a triumphant and overconfident Church, led by an already visibly ill John Paul II, the pope who was credited with helping to topple communism and revive Catholicism as a global force. It was a celebration of faith, that had important moments for many Catholics, especially for young people.
And now “la triste époque”
But the Jubilee of 2000 was also an illusory moment for the institutional Church and its influence both in the world and the ecclesial community. Less than a year after it was over, the world witnessed the horror of 9/11 — the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Then, just a few months later, in January 2002, the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” reports exploded Catholic Church’s abuse crisis at the global level.
Andrea Riccardi, the Italian historian and founder of the Sant’Egidio Community, said in 2011 that the post-2001 period should be known as “la triste époque” in contrast to the “belle époque” of the early 20th century, as well as to the 1990s illusion of the magnificent and progressive fortunes of globalization.
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