In view of the approaching start of the Jubilee 2025, the question has recently been raised as to whether it would be possible to provide for the configuration and opening of the Holy Door in Cathedral Churches, International and National Shrines, as well as in other particularly significant places of worship.
In this regard, while respecting the most sensitive consideration of the pastoral and devotional motivations that may have suggested such a laudable aspiration, it is nevertheless deemed necessary to recall the precise indications established by the Holy Father in the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee 2025, Spes non confundit, which indicates as the Holy Door that of Saint Peter’s Basilica and the other three Papal Basilicas, namely Saint John Lateran, Saint Mary Major and Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls (cf. No. 6), except for the Holy Father’s expressed desire to personally open a Holy Door in a prison “to offer prisoners a concrete sign of closeness” (cf. No. 10).
It is also well known that a peculiar and identifying sign of the Jubilee Year, as handed down ever since the first Jubilee of the year 1300, is the indulgence, which is intended as “a way of discovering the unlimited nature of God’s mercy” (cf. No. 23), through the Sacrament of Penance and the signs of charity and hope (cf. Nos. 7-15).
Therefore, in order to live this moment of grace to the full, one is urged to refer to the particular places and the different modalities indicated by the Decree of the Apostolic Penitentiary of 13 May 2024.