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“The Jubilee is coming to an end, but the hope that this year has given us will not fade,” said Pope Leo XIV during the final Jubilee audience, held in St. Peter’s Square on December 20, 2025.
On the day before the final Sunday of Advent, he affirmed that “to hope is to give birth,” citing the example of Mary’s motherhood.
Cheered by several thousand pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square on this winter morning, Leo XIV took a tour in the popemobile before reading his teaching on hope, the virtue to which this holy year is dedicated.
“Without hope, we are dead,” he said, emphasizing that Christmas, which commemorates the birth of Christ, teaches that “to hope is to give birth.”
“If Christian prayer is so deeply Marian, it is because we see in Mary of Nazareth one of our own who gives birth,” explained the Pope, recalling that the Mother of God is described in the prayer of the Salve Regina (the Hail Holy Queen) as “our hope.”
“We resemble her because we can bring forth the Word of God here on earth, transforming the cry we hear into childbirth,” he said, affirming that “Jesus wants to be born again” in each of us. “This is the childbirth that creation awaits.”
Unlike evil, “which begets nothing,” God’s power “gives birth,” insisted Leo XIV.
He denounced the deadly hoarding of the earth’s natural resources, “increasingly concentrated —unjustly — in the hands of those who often do not want to hear the groans of the earth and the poor.”
Towards the end of the Jubilee
On the occasion of this last Jubilee audience, the Pope gave an initial assessment of this year of festivities initiated on December 25 by Pope Francis:
“The Jubilee is coming to an end, but the hope that this year has given us does not die.”
“We will remain pilgrims of hope!” he assured, echoing the motto of this Holy Year.
Jubilee audiences on Saturdays were an initiative of Pope Francis, to offer the thousands of faithful who traveled to Rome for the Jubilee an extra chance to see the Successor of Peter, beyond the Wednesday audiences.
Although this was the last Jubilee audience, the Jubilee is not yet over. Pilgrims can still pass through the holy door of St. Peter’s Basilica until January 6, when it will be closed by Pope Leo.
The holy doors of the other major basilicas will be closed by their respective archpriests in the coming days: St. Mary Major by Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas on December 25, St. John Lateran by Cardinal Vicar Baldo Reina on December 27, and St. Paul Outside the Walls by Cardinal Michael Harvey on December 28.
Unless Leo decides to declare an extraordinary jubilee, it is expected that the next jubilee year will be in 2033, celebrating the 2,000th anniversary of Christ’s death and resurrection, which tradition holds occurred in the year 33 AD.
