Pope gives thanks for Jubilee preparations at New Year's Eve vespers

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A week after inaugurating the Holy Year 2025, Pope Francis gave thanks for all the work that went into its preparation and prayed that it would be a year of peace, justice and fraternity.

“At this time, we want to raise our thanksgiving to God because he has allowed us to work, to work so much, and especially because he has allowed us to do it with this great sense, with this broad horizon that is the hope of fraternity,” he said during an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 31.

Pope Francis gives his homily during an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica for New Year’s Eve at the Vatican Dec. 31, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

Though Rome spent much of 2024 covered in scaffolding, the pope said that “it is nice to think that our city in the last months became a construction site for this purpose, with this greater sense: to prepare itself to welcome men and women from the whole world, Catholics and Christians from other confessions, believers of all religions, seekers of truth, freedom, justice and peace, all pilgrims of hope and fraternity.”

Setting aside his prepared text, Pope Francis offered special thanks to the workers whose efforts made the Jubilee preparations possible, as well as to Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, who was seated in the front row of the congregation. The pope reiterated that Rome is a city “called to welcome all so that everyone may recognize themselves as children of God and brothers and sisters to each other.”

The pope, accompanied by 36 cardinals, 22 bishops, 40 priests and thousands of visitors in the basilica prayed vespers and then sang the “Te Deum” (“We praise you, oh God”) in thanksgiving for the blessings of the past year.

In his homily during the prayer service, the pope said that striving for human fraternity is not just a “rhetorical slogan” but is rooted in the person of Jesus Christ.

“The hope of a fraternal world is not an ideology, not an economic system, not technological progress, no,” he said. “He is the hope of a fraternal world, the incarnate Son sent by the Father so that all may become that which we are, that is, children of the Father who is in heaven and therefore brothers and sisters to each other.”

While pilgrims to Rome will be able to admire the results of the construction around the city, the pope called on Christians to focus on personal transformation as the most significant “construction site” of the Holy Year.

He encouraged Christians to make a conscious effort each day to allow God to change within them “that which is not humane” and to commit themselves to being brothers and sisters to others.

At the end of his homily, the pope added an impromptu prayer asking God to “give us the strength to go forth in our pilgrimage next year.”

Despite the extraordinary cold gripping Rome, Pope Francis visited the Vatican Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square after the service. Seated in a wheelchair, he greeted the faithful gathered there, handing chocolates to children while the Swiss Guard band played Christmas carols to serenade the crowd.