GLASGOW, Scotland (OSV News) — As the Jubilee Year picks up speed, the faithful must participate by sharing what we have with the disadvantaged, Catholic charity Mary’s Meals urged.
Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, the founder of Mary’s Meals, explained that hope — the theme for the Jubilee Year opened by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 24 — “is a word that has informed and inspired the work of Mary’s Meals since the beginning.” The charity, named in honor of Our Lady, continues its mission to provide education to children in communities where hunger and poverty have left many without access to schooling.
Mary’s Meals was funded by MacFarlane-Barrow — who quit his Scottish salmon farming career in 1992 and threw himself into the charity business — in 2002. He started with meal distribution to 200 children in two primary schools in Malawi. Today, Mary’s Meals serves meals to 2,429,182 children every school day across 17 countries.
“During the Holy Year, we are called to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind,” Pope Francis said in the bull published prior to the Jubilee Year’s opening.
In a pre-Christmas press release, Mary’s Meals said it “continues to bring hope to children worldwide, especially in regions affected by conflict, climate change” and the “lingering impact” of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In keeping with the Jubilee theme of “Pilgrims of Hope,” Mary’s Meals called on supporters to join in “spreading hope through acts of charity.” MacFarlane-Barrow, who plans his own pilgrimage during the Jubilee, believes that learning to carry out this work with “greater love” allows people to “better share hope with a world in need.”
Pope Francis’ “Bull of Indiction” expresses hope for all, particularly for the billions of poor who still lack the basic essentials of life. “It is scandalous that in a world possessed of immense resources, destined largely to producing weapons, the poor continue to be ‘the majority of the planet’s population,'” the pontiff wrote, adding the problems of the poor “are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage.”
Asked by OSV News in November what it feels like for the Mary’s Meals program to have grown so much, from distributing a couple hundred meals a day to over 2.4 million meals a day, MacFarlane-Barrow, husband of Julie and father of seven, said that on one hand, “it’s amazing. It’s wonderful. It’s something I have this enormous sense of gratitude for to see this thing grow.”
But on the other hand, he said that while “we live in a world of plenty that produces more than enough food for all of us,” there are “67,000,000 children” who are not in school because they are hungry — echoing Pope Francis’ call for the developed world to feed parts of the world that are still hungry.
MacFarlane-Barrow said that a full answer to the question is “always with that other feeling of there’s so much more to do. And why aren’t we making that happen more quickly?”
“That vision that every child in the world should eat every day a meal in school, that’s entirely possible,” MacFarlane-Barrow told OSV News. “You know, it’s a scandal that’s not already happening.” And he thinks that the Jubilee Year is the best time to make that gap between the privileged and the poor disappear.
As part of the Jubilee, pilgrims can earn the indulgence by visiting any Holy Door, whether in Rome or elsewhere. The faithful are also encouraged to perform acts of charity, especially corporal works of mercy, like feeding the hungry. The Jubilee plenary indulgence can also be obtained by embracing penance, such as fasting or donating to the poor.
The Holy Year will conclude on Jan. 6, 2026, with the closing of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica, and at particular churches on Dec. 28, 2025.
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