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Pope Francis will open a “holy door” in the Roman prison of Rebbibia as a “symbol of hope” on December 26, two days after the inauguration of a Jubilee that will also offer various cultural events to pilgrims arriving in the capital.
The pontiff will preside over the opening of the ‘Holy Door’ of St. Peter’s Basilica at 7:00 p.m. local time (18:00 GMT) on December 24, which is always walled and is only opened during each Jubilee, every 25 years, or in its extraordinary versions.
But two days later, Francis will extend this “grace” to the Rebbibia prison, where he will personally go to open another door, as Archbishop Rino Fisichella explained on Monday at the press conference for the event.
In the bull with which he announced the Jubilee, ‘Spes non confundit’, the pontiff encouraged the world to be a “tangible symbol of hope” and asked governments to promote “initiatives of amnesty or forgiveness” during the Holy Year.
The Holy Doors, as is tradition, will only be in the four papal basilicas in Rome – St. Peter’s in the Vatican, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major and St. Paul Outside the Walls – but another one will also be opened in the aforementioned penitentiary.
Two concerts have been organised before the Jubilee: one on 3 November featuring Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, performed by the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, and another on 22 December featuring the Sistine Chapel Choir singing several of Palestrina’s compositions in the Church of St Ignatius of Loyola.
According to the Holy See, Marc Chagall’s painting ‘White Crucifixion’ will also be exhibited free of charge at the Cipolla Palace in Rome, thanks to its loan from the Art Institute of Chicago.
The curator of the jubilee programme, Davide Mambriani, explained at the press conference that with this painting Chagall “illustrated the devastation of the pogroms” of history and maintained that “along with Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ it represents one of the most eloquent condemnations of war and hatred in the 20th century.”
A message, he stressed, “still dramatically relevant.”
On the other hand, from December 16th some “rare icons” from the Vatican Museums will be on display in the Borromini sacristy of the church of Santa Agnes, in Rome’s Piazza Navona.
The Holy See has also presented the pavilion it will send to the Osaka World Expo in 2025, integrated this time into the Italian installation, according to Fisichella.
The theme of the Vatican Pavilion will be ‘Beauty leads to hope’ to send “a universal message” and “reawaken the desire for a better world”.
To this end, the Vatican Museums will lend its only Caravaggio painting, ‘The Holy Burial (1602-1604), for about six months, according to the director of the papal museum, Barbara Jatta.
