Catholics encouraged to be ‘Pilgrims of hope’ in Jubilee Year

The Jubilee Year the church is celebrating in 2025 — themed “Pilgrims of Hope” by Pope Francis — offers an opportunity to look at the world and the church in changing times, said Dr. Karen Shadle, director of the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Office of Worship.

“We mark important things in our lives,” she said, noting celebrations such as anniversaries, birthdays and graduations. “We can think of the jubilee year as all of that combined for the church.” 

The Catholic Church has held jubilees every 25 years since the 1400s, she noted. 

“It’s a celebration of the church continued,” she said. “We made it another 25 years. Here we are as a church.”

During jubilee years, the church looks at the challenges facing the current age and responds, said Shadle. 

Since the last ordinary jubilee year in 2000, growing secularism, war, financial crises and the pandemic could be counted among the challenges, she said. Discouragement and pessimism can be common temptations within local churches, she said.

In response to the current age, Pope Francis has offered an “optimistic theme” of hope, she noted. “I think the theme of hope is really well suited to what the church needs at this juncture, in this generation,” she said.

The Holy Year also poses an opportunity to “get outside of your comfort zone,” said Shadle. “Making a pilgrimage is traditionally part of the Jubilee Year.”

Millions are expected to visit Rome for the Jubilee Year, she noted. The sheer number of pilgrims visiting Rome for the Jubilee Year should remind the faithful of the strength of the global church, she said. “There are millions of people making this trek. It shows how strong the church is globally,” said Shadle.

As Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre has designated six local pilgrimage sites for the 2025 Jubilee Year, Catholics in the archdiocese are offered a unique opportunity for a local pilgrimage, she said.

The six archdiocesan pilgrimage sites are — the Cathedral of the Assumption and the Shrine of St. Martin of Tours in Louisville, the Basilica of St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral in Bardstown, Ky., the Church of St. Augustine in Lebanon, Ky., the Church of St. Helen in Glasgow, Ky. and the Church of the Holy Cross in Loretto, Ky.

Sites were chosen within the archdiocese “so that every Catholic in the archdiocese in good health was close enough to make a regional pilgrimage,” said Shadle. 

“A lot of us have no idea what it’s like outside of our own parish bubble,” she noted. 

During the Jubilee Year, “challenge yourself to go visit a church that you haven’t been to,” she suggested. “We’ve just reorganized into deaneries. Go to mass in every deanery. If you haven’t been to Eucharistic adoration, try going to that. If you’ve never been to Vespers, go experience that,” she said.

To read about Archbishop Fabre’s message at the opening Mass of the Archdiocese of Louisville’s celebration of the Jubilee Year of Hope, click here.

Olivia Castlen
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Olivia Castlen
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