Pilgrims pass through Vatican Holy Door as the 2025 Holy Year begins
Elsewhere in the world, Hanukkah started on Christmas Day for the first time since 2005 and celebrations were muted in Germany.
Pilgrims lined up early to walk through the Holy Door at the entrance of St Peter’s Basilica as Christmas marked the start of the 2025 Holy Year celebration that is expected to bring some 32 million Catholic faithful to Rome.
Traversing the Holy Door is one way that the faithful can obtain indulgences, or forgiveness for sins during a Jubilee, a once-every-quarter-century tradition that dates from 1300. On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis knocked on the door and was the first to walk through it, inaugurating the 2025 Jubilee that he dedicated to hope.
Pilgrims submitted to security controls before entering the Holy Door, amid new security fears following a fatal Christmas market attack in Germany. Many paused to touch the door as they passed and made the sign of the cross upon entering the basilica dedicated to St Peter, founder of the Roman Catholic Church.
At noon, Francis will deliver the “Urbi et Orbi” – “To the City and the World” address, which serves as a summary of the woes facing the world this year.
– A Chrismukkah miracle as Hanukkah and Christmas coincide
Hanukkah, Judaism’s eight-day Festival of Lights, begins this year on Christmas Day, which has only happened four times since 1900.
The calendar confluence has inspired some religious leaders to host interfaith gatherings, such as a Chicanukah party hosted last week by several Jewish organisations in Houston, Texas, bringing together members of the city’s Latino and Jewish communities for latkes, the traditional potato pancake eaten on Hanukkah, topped with guacamole and salsa.
While Hanukkah is intended as an upbeat, celebratory holiday, rabbis note that it is taking place this year as wars rage in the Middle East and fears rise over widespread incidents of antisemitism. The holidays overlap infrequently because the Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles and is not in sync with the Gregorian calendar, which sets Christmas on December 25. The last time Hanukkah began on Christmas Day was in 2005.
– German celebrations muted by market attack
German celebrations were darkened by a car attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg on Friday that left five people dead, including a nine-year-old boy, and 200 people injured. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier rewrote his recorded Christmas Day speech to address the attack, saying that “there is grief, pain, horror and incomprehension over what took place in Magdeburg”. He urged Germans to “stand together” and that “hate and violence must not have the last word”.
A 50-year-old Saudi doctor who had practised medicine in Germany since 2006 was arrested on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm. The suspect’s X account describes him as a former Muslim and is filled with anti-Islamic themes. He criticised authorities for failing to combat “the Islamification of Germany” and voiced support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
