Jubilee 2025: 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea

In the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee 2025, Pope Francis noted the felicity of the coincidence of the Jubilee Year with the anniversarly of the Council of Nicaea: 

The coming Jubilee Year will also coincide with a significant date for all Christians, namely, the 1700th anniversary of the celebration of the first great Ecumenical Council, that of Nicaea....

The Council of Nicaea sought to preserve the Church’s unity, which was seriously threatened by the denial of the full divinity of Jesus Christ and hence his consubstantiality with the Father. Some three hundred bishops took part, convoked at the behest of the Emperor Constantine; their first meeting took place in the Imperial Palace on 20 May 325. After various debates, by the grace of the Spirit they unanimously approved the Creed that we still recite each Sunday at the celebration of the Eucharist. The Council Fathers chose to begin that Creed by using for the first time the expression “ We believe”, as a sign that all the Churches were in communion and that all Christians professed the same faith.

This aspect of the Jubilee Year is being marked by Pope Leo XIV's visit to Turkiye, a visit that includes a celebration where the Council itself took place. In anticipation of that visit, Pope Leo published his Apsotolic Letter In Unitate Fidei, which explores the history and theology of the Nicene Creed. Recognising that the Creed is a lived statement of faith, Pope Leo also asks us to reflect on what the profession of the Nicene Creed means for those who recite it each Sunday at Mass (n.10 ff):

The path that began with Sacred Scripture and led to the profession of faith in Nicaea, subsequently accepted in Constantinople and Chalcedon, and again in the 16th and 21st centuries, has been a long and consistent one. All of us, as disciples of Jesus Christ, are baptized “in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We make the sign of the cross on ourselves and we are blessed. We conclude each prayer of the psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours with “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” Both the liturgy and the Christian life are thus firmly anchored in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed: what we profess with our mouths must come from the heart so that we may bear witness to it with our lives. We must therefore ask ourselves: What about our interior reception of the Creed today? Do we experience that it also affects our current situation? Do we understand and live out what we say every Sunday? What do these words mean for our lives?

In his address during the celebration at Iznik, Pope Leo XIV makes an interesting suggestion with regard to the ecumenical significance of the Christological affirmation of the Nicene Creed that seems to parallel Pope St John Paul II's suggestion (Ut Unum Sint n.84) that in martyrdom a fullness of communion in ecclesial life is already achieved. It is the citation of St Augustine that appears to give a strength to Pope Leo's words not dissimilar to those of Pope St John Paul II:

This Christological confession of faith is of fundamental importance in the journey that Christians are making towards full communion. For it is shared by all Christian Churches and Communities throughout the world, including those which, for various reasons, do not use the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in their liturgies. Indeed, faith “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages... consubstantial with the Father” (Nicene Creed) is a profound bond already uniting all Christians. In this sense, to quote Saint Augustine, in the ecumenical context we can also say that, “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one” (Exposition on Psalm 127). Consequently, with an awareness that we are already linked by such a profound bond, we can continue our journey of ever deeper adherence to the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in mutual love and dialogue. 

I have a particular affection for the profession of faith of Pope Paul VI offered at the closing of the Year of Faith in June 1968, a year that marked the 19th centenary of the martrydoms of St Peter and St Paul. That profession of faith is an extended exposition of the Nicene Creed, and is now known as the Credo of the People of God:

On this day which is chosen to close the Year of Faith, on this feast of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, we have wished to offer to the living God the homage of a profession of faith. And as once at Caesarea Philippi the apostle Peter spoke on behalf of the twelve to make a true confession, beyond human opinions, of Christ as Son of the living God, so today his humble successor, pastor of the Universal Church, raises his voice to give, on behalf of all the People of God, a firm witness to the divine Truth entrusted to the Church to be announced to all nations.

The Jubilee of Choirs

In the Roman Liturgy, one of the Lenten Prefaces ends with the exhortation:

Through him the Angels praise your majesty,
Dominions adore and Powers tremble before you.
Heaven and the Virtues of heaven and the blessed Seraphim
worship together with exultation.
May our voices, we pray, join with theirs
in humble praise, as we acclaim: 

The Easter Prefaces end:

Therefore, overcome with paschal joy,
every land, every people exults in your praise
and even the heavenly Powers, with the angelic hosts, 
sing together the unending hymn of your glory
as they acclaim:

And the text of the Sanctus that these words introduce takes us to the words of the six winged Seraphim before the throne of God in the vision of Isaiah (Is. 6):

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.

As the Church celebrates the Jubilee of Choirs in the days 22nd-23rd November 2025, to coincide with the feast day of St Cecilia, the Liturgy suggests to us that the voices raised in praise of God here on earth, voices which express praise on behalf of the whole cosmos, are one with those of the heavenly liturgy. It is interesting to consider the extent to which, as we attend Mass, we let ourselves become explicitly conscious of the heavenly character of our worship.

In his chapter on "Music and Liturgy" in the book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Joseph Ratzinger offers the following reflection:

In the Eucharist a communion takes place that corresponds to the union of man and woman in marriage. Just as they become "one flesh", so in Communion we all become "one spirit", one person, with Christ. The spousal mystery , announced in the Old Testament, of the intimate union of God and man takes place in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, precisely through his Passion and in a very real way. The singing of the Church comes ultimately out of love. It is the utter depth of love that produces the singing. "Cantare amantis est", says St Augustine, singing is a lover's thing.

For those who sing in more secular contexts, their singing can perhaps be seen as one of those "seeds of the Gospel" of which the Jubilee Prayer speaks:

May your grace transform us into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel. May those seeds transform from within both humanity and the whole cosmos in the sure expectation of a new heaven and a new earth, when, with the powers of Evil vanquished, your glory will shine eternally. 

Jubilee of the Poor

 The Jubilee event dedicated to the poor is to be celebrated from the evening of 14th November 2025, concluding on the World Day of the Poor on Sunday 16th November 2025. It is reported that, after his election to the See of St Peter, Pope Francis was prompted to take the name Francis after a remark from one of his fellow cardinals to the effect that he should not forget the poor. Similarly, Pope Leo XIV's first major document has been dedicated to the Catholic Church's particular mission towards the poor:

...  in continuity with the Encyclical Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis was preparing in the last months of his life an Apostolic Exhortation on the Church’s care for the poor, to which he gave the title Dilexi Te, as if Christ speaks those words to each of them, saying: “You have but little power,” yet “I have loved you” ( Rev 3:9). I am happy to make this document my own — adding some reflections — and to issue it at the beginning of my own pontificate, since I share the desire of my beloved predecessor that all Christians come to appreciate the close connection between Christ’s love and his summons to care for the poor. I too consider it essential to insist on this path to holiness, for “in this call to recognize him in the poor and the suffering, we see revealed the very heart of Christ, his deepest feelings and choices, which every saint seeks to imitate.” 

The person who is poor is likely to lack shelter, to be without access to clean water for drinking or for washing, to lack regular access to wholesome food, to lack clothing suitable to the weather, to have no habitation that they can call their own with any permanence, to lack the company of family or friends, to be disregarded by those who pass by; they might be anywhere in the world, not just in those places that are less developed than our own. The person who is poor lacks the material things that are the framework for a life lived with the dignity that is due to a human person; being poor, they lack the agency  that gives them the opportunity to choose a way in life. 

It is this lack of agency in their being poor that distinguishes their poverty from that of the life of the evangelical counsels. At first sight, the Church appears to contradict itself in advocating for poverty as one of the evangelical counsels freely chosen by those in religious life and working to alleviate poverty among those who do not have the agency to choose other than their poverty. Though the two poverties are quite different in nature from each other, there is a common ground for both of them. The life of the evangelical counsels represents a choice for a style of life lived in close imitation of that lived by Christ himself, and so is an attempt to identify a life with the life of Christ. Then, as Pope Leo XIV has pointed out, in a kind of reciprocity we are called to recognise Christ in those who are involuntarily poor and suffering.

There is a story of St Benedict Joseph Labre, who lived the last part of his life as a poor vagrant in the city of Rome in the 18th century, that captures the essential dignity that belongs to the person who is poor. On one occasion, he was picked out from the vagrants around the Spanish Steps to pose as a model by a painter. It took a bit of persuasion before St Benedict Joseph agreed, and he then posed for the figure of Christ, having at first shuddered at the prospect. Given the intinerant nature of his life, St Benedict Joseph (see here and here) is an appropriate figure to whom we can turn in a Jubilee Year.

Pope Francis expressed his wish that hope be granted to the poor in the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee Year, citing his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si' n.49:

I ask with all my heart that hope be granted to the billions of the poor, who often lack the essentials of life. Before the constant tide of new forms of impoverishment, we can easily grow inured and resigned. Yet we must not close our eyes to the dramatic situations that we now encounter all around us, not only in certain parts of the world. Each day we meet people who are poor or impoverished; they may even be our next-door neighbours. Often they are homeless or lack sufficient food for the day. They suffer from exclusion and indifference on the part of many. 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, billions of people. These days they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems 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. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile”. Let us not forget: the poor are almost always the victims, not the ones to blame.

The claim to the title "Christian"

I am prompted to reflect on the claim to the use of the title "Christian" by some recent events. On two occasions recently, the Christian symbol of the Cross has been displayed at political demonstrations in London, thereby appropriating to the intentions of those demonstrations the title "Christian". In the United States, the Turning Point movement, essentially political in character, has used the Christian faith of its founder to appropriate a Christian character to the movement. There is also the claim to identify Britain as a Christian country, expressed eloquently by Danny Kruger speaking in the House of Commons:

When I speak of the Church of England today, I am not speaking about the internal politics of the Anglican sect; I speak of the common creed of our country, the official religion of the English and the British nation, and the institution—older than the monarchy, and much older than Parliament—which made this country.

I have three observations:

1. Beware of a use of the term "Christian" in way that leaves an exact meaning unexpressed. In this usage it might refer to anything from structured Christian bodies, such as the Episcopalian Church in the United States or the Church of England in Britain, to completely independent congregations via networks of Evangelical (mega-) churches. In this usage, exactly who or what is the "Christian" that is referenced? If we are not careful, the use of the term has such wide range of possible references that it becomes empty of substantial meaning.

2. Beware of a politics that is, first of all and in principle, a politics but which then wishes to add to itself the descriptor "Christian". This remains first and foremost a politics and, even if its advocates might profess a Christian faith (but see point 1 above), that does not allow the political stance in itself to be called "Christian". As might be said on the London Underground, we need to "mind the gap" and not permit the "Christian" claim of such a politics to establish for it an unwarranted credibility.

3. There are politicians who profess a Christian faith and, on the basis of that faith, advocate for certain positions in their public life. This, however, is a somewhat inverse of the position described at point 2 above. See the words of Pope Benedict below.

But rather than trying to create a politics that wishes to claim a title of "Christian", Pope Benedict XVI and, more recently, Pope Leo XIV have advocated for a "healthy secularity" in the world of culture and politics.

Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Westminster Hall during his visit to the United Kingdom in 2010:

The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

 Pope Leo XIV speaking to a working group on inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue:

European institutions need people who know how to live a healthy secularism, that is, a style of thinking and acting that affirms the value of religion while preserving the distinction — not separation or confusion — from the political sphere.  In particular, it is worth noting the examples of Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide De Gasperi.

Jubilee of the World of Work

 A Jubilee for workers was due to take place during the days 1st-4th May 2025, but was not able to take place following the death of Pope Francis. On 8th November 2025, a celebration of a Jubilee for Workers will take place.

In September 1981, Pope St John Paul II issued his Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, dedicated to the principles of the idea of human work and to discussing the contemporary problems relating to human work.

From the beginning therefore [man] is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.

Starting from an analysis of the teaching of the Book of Genesis (Gen.1:28) - "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it" - John Paul II presents work in both its objective and subjective senses. He first suggests that work is something characteristic of the human person that identifies the human person apart from other creatures. The objective sense of work lies in the nature of the actual tasks undertaken, and John Paul outlines how this has changed over time, developing from a largely manual form of work to an increasingly mechanised form.

Understood in this case not as a capacity or aptitude for work, but rather as a whole set of instruments which man uses in his work, technology is undoubtedly man's ally. It facilitates his work, perfects, accelerates and augments it. It leads to an increase in the quantity of things produced by work, and in many cases improves their quality. However, it is also a fact that, in some instances, technology can cease to be man's ally and become almost his enemy, as when the mechanization of work "supplants" him, taking away all personal satisfaction and the incentive to creativity and responsibility, when it deprives many workers of their previous employment, or when, through exalting the machine, it reduces man to the status of its slave.

This development towards an ever more technological form of work, viewed in its objective sense, brings to the fore the question of work in its subjective sense:

Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the "image of God" he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself, and with a tendency to self-realization. As a person, man is therefore the subject of work. As a person he works, he performs various actions belonging to the work process; independently of their objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfil the calling to be a person that is his by reason of his very humanity. ...

...the basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person. The sources of the dignity of work are to be sought primarily in the subjective dimension, not in the objective one.

...This does not mean that, from the objective point of view, human work cannot and must not be rated and qualified in any way. It only means that the primary basis of the value of work is man himself, who is its subject. This leads immediately to a very important conclusion of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined for work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man" and not man "for work". 

 From this starting point, John Paul goes on to discuss in detail the contemporary situation of the world of work. But this reflection itself can already prompt individuals to look at their own experience of work, and ask how they can try to achieve that agency with regard to their work that will allow them to more effectively act as a subject rather than a slave of their work. And it also brings to the attention of those fortunate enough to be able to work that long term unemployment represents an undermining of the dignity of the person.

Jubilee of the World of Education

The Jubilee of the world of education will take place in the days 27th October - 1st November, with the declaration of St John Henry Newman as a doctor of the Church to take place during the concluding Mass celebrated by Pope Leo XIV. A wide range of events are organised for the days of this Jubilee, as can be seen by following the link above. Perhaps of particular note is an International Congress that marks the 60th anniversary of the Declaration on Christian Education Gravissimum Educationis.

The then Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education issued a document Catholic Schools in March 1977.  That document suggests a two fold integration as the intention of the work of a Catholic school, an integration of faith and culture and an integration of faith and life:

n.49 (cf n.38-39, 44). The specific mission of the school, then, is a critical systematic transmission of culture in the light of faith and the bringing forth of the power of Christian virtue by the integration of culture with faith and faith with living.

In his Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope St John Paul II described the identity of the Catholic university, as both university and as Catholic:

12. Every Catholic University, as a university, is an academic community which, in a rigorous and critical fashion, assists in the protection and advancement of human dignity and of a cultural heritage through research, teaching and various services offered to the local, national and international communities. It possesses that institutional autonomy necessary to perform its functions effectively and guarantees its members academic freedom, so long as the rights of the individual person and of the community are preserved within the confines of the truth and the common good.

13. Since the objective of a Catholic University is to assure in an institutional manner a Christian presence in the university world confronting the great problems of society and culture, every Catholic University, as Catholic, must have the following essential characteristics:

"1. a Christian inspiration not only of individuals but of the university community as such;

2. a continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith upon the growing treasury of human knowledge, to which it seeks to contribute by its own research;

3. fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church;

4. an institutional commitment to the service of the people of God and of the human family in their pilgrimage to the transcendent goal which gives meaning to life".

Together, schools and universities are perhaps the main, though not exclusive, ways in which the Church is present in the world of education.

St John Henry Newman, to be declared a Doctor of the Church on the closing day of this Jubilee, perhaps summarised all of this for his own times in a sermon entitled "Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training":

Here, then, I conceive, is the object of the Holy See and the Catholic Church in setting up universities; it is to re-unite things which were in the beginning joined together by God, and have been put asunder by man. ... I wish the intellect to range with the utmost freedom, and religion to enjoy an equal freedom; but what I am stipulating for is that they should be found in one and the same place, and exemplified in the same persons. ... It will not satisfy me if religion is here, and science there, and young men converse with science all day, and lodge with religion in the evening.  ...I want the same roof to contain both the intellectual and moral discipline. 

Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies

 A Jubilee dedicated to Synodal Teams and other participatory bodies in the Church is being held 24th - 26th October 2025. It is being held under the aegis of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. I should, perhaps, declare a certain bias in my own sense of the process of Synodality to which this particular Jubilee refers - see An Aside on Synodality. An explanation of the working of the Synod of Bishops (in general, not just referring to the current Synod on Synodality) can be found here: The Synod. It is possible to recognise in the changes introduced by Pope Francis the pattern of preparatory, discussion and implementation phases that are a feature of the Synod on Synodality and which now would apply to every meeting of the Synod. 

One of the features of the Synodal process that may have been experienced in parishes, and will be the subject of one of the workshops at the Jubilee, is that of Conversations in the Spirit: see here and here. 

Watching the video clip, its three rounds reminded me of the "See, Judge, Act" of Cardinal Cardijn's Young Christian Workers (YCW). There is an account of one such Young Christian Workers meeting that has a specific family connection. During the section meeting one week my mother apparently could only think to mention that she had received a pay rise. This was during the "See" part of the meeting, when each member of the section mentioned some activity since the previous week's meeting. It became apparent that another girl in the group, who worked in a different factory, had not had a pay rise. This triggered a chain of events in which my mother introduced this girl to her trade union, and then to the establishment of the union in what had previously been a non- union factory. In due course, mother received a letter from the Secretary of the local branch of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers (NUTGW) thanking her for the work she had undertaken to get the union established in that factory. 

We found that letter amongst mother's things after she died ... and there then followed a chain of research into the whole story, both from the point of view of that particular YCW section (I have some letters from mother's then YCW colleagues, including from the girl she first recruited to the NUTGW) and the situation of the cotton industry at the time. 

This particular "Conversation in the Spirit" took place in ....  1942.

I have only just realised that Pope St John XXIII explicitly referred to the "See, Judge, Act" methodology in his Encyclical Letter Mater et Magistra of 1961 (nn.236-237), and we might see that as a foreshadowing of the practice of Conversation in the Spirit:

There are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice. First, one reviews the concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgment on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act.

It is important for our young people to grasp this method and to practice it. Knowledge acquired in this way does not remain merely abstract, but is seen as something that must be translated into action.