Jubilee Diary: “Disarming Communication”

2025 Jubilee of Hope Diary: The Jubilee of Communication, held in Rome on January 24, 2025

By Anna Artymiak*

Note: This report is from Polish  journalist Anna Artymiak’s diary for  January 24, 2025.

Thanks to the eyewitnesses and chroniclers of the time, we know that 725 years ago, in 1300, the very first Jubilee Year was declared. The Catholic history of Jubilee Years started then. One of those chroniclers was a certain Cardinal Iacopo Stefaneschi, who wrote De Centesimo Seu Iubileo Anno Liber (“Book on the Hundredth or Jubilee Year”); Jubilees were originally set to take place every one hundred years.

In it, Stefaneschi said that a great multitude came to Rome from many countries, arriving around Christmas Eve, 1299, with the single intention of receiving an indulgence in commemoration of the dawn of a new century. The streets were crowded, says Stefaneschi, with so many people from near and far that, at times, many feared being crushed by the throng. Thus be gan the first official Jubilee, declared by Pope Boniface VIII in the February 22, 1300 Bull Antiquorum Habet.

This year, January 24, the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, marked the very first big event of the current 2025 Jubilee Year after the opening of the Holy Doors in St. Peter’s on December 24.

The Jubilee of World Communication began today [at St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome. The organizers wanted the media and communications pilgrims to be welcomed by the City of Rome, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head organizer of the Jubilee events, said.

It was a beautiful evening, though chilly, even inside the Basilica, after a day that had been very sunny and hot. In the beginning, it seemed that there would be almost nobody in attendance. Most of the pilgrims arrived at the very last moment, and passed through the Jubilee Holy Door.

I was touched by the people who came for the event, their spiritual concentration. You could see that they came to live the event profoundly, to have their own jubilee. There were many communications professionals from their dioceses. Among the pilgrims from around the world, there were also some bishops and members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the 2025 Jubilee Year organization, during a briefing with journalists

January 24: A Significant Date

The January 24 date is not accidental. There are a few reasons for this.

First of all, St. Francis de Sales is a patron of media and communications professionals. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the 2025 Jubilee Year organization, noted this at a briefing today at the Holy See Press Office.

Secondly, this feast day is also the World Day of Social Communications. This year is the 59th edition. It is a tradition that the Pope on that day releases his “Message to the World of Communications.” Francis did so today, under the title “Share with Gentleness the Hope that is in your Hearts.”

In it, he invited journalists to be communicators, not only of events, but of hope, and to “disarm” communication so as not to ever use it as a weapon.

The Penitential Liturgy

Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first official Jubilee with the Bull Antiquorum Habet on 22 February 1300.

Archbishop Fisichella said that the scheme of each of the major events of the Jubilee would be basically the same, but there is a particular and intriguing element which is only part of the Jubilee of the World Communications: the Penitential Liturgy.

The Penitential Liturgy has become increasingly popular thanks to Pope Francis who introduced the tradition of the so-called “24 Hours for the Lord,” on the Friday before the 4th Sunday in Lent. Tonight the confessions were available in English, Italian, Spanish, and also Japanese. There were lines to confession — 60 priests were asked to hear  confession, including some bishops.

The Penitential Liturgy started with an entrance procession with a relic of St. Francis de Sales: his heart.

Then, it was laid in front of the altar.

Fr. Giulio Albanese, an Italian Comboni missionary and journalist who worked for many years in Uganda and Kenya, conducted the liturgy in both Italian and English.

He founded the agency MISNA and collaborates with many Catholic news outlets, mainly Italian.

He warned those present not to be “mercenaries” of the words of others, but to be carriers only of what is true.

It was followed by Holy Mass celebrated by Cardinal Baldassare Reina, the Pope’s Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome. He referred to the Pope’s “Message for the World Day of Communications,” repeating the necessity of being “communicators of hope” and “disarming communication.”

The Pope had said in this message: “Too often today, communication generates not hope, but fear and despair, prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred. All too often it simplifies reality in order to provoke instinctive reactions; it uses words like a razor; it even uses false or artfully distorted information to send messages designed to agitate, provoke or hurt. On several occasions, I have spoken of our need to ‘disarm’ communication and to purify it of aggressiveness. It never helps to reduce reality to slogans… I dream of a communication capable of making us fellow travelers, walking alongside our brothers and sisters and encouraging them to hope in these troubled times. A communication capable of speaking to the heart, arousing not passionate reactions of defensiveness and anger, but attitudes of openness and friendship. A communication capable of focusing on beauty and hope even in the midst of apparently desperate situations, and generating commitment, empathy and concern for others. A communication that can help us in ‘recognizing the dignity of each human being, and [in] working together to care for our common home’ (Dilexit Nos, 217).”

Communicating the experience of the Jubilee

But there also comes to mind a third reason why having the first major event of the 2025 Jubilee Year on the feast of St. Francis de Sales makes sense.

“If one lives spiritually the experience of the Jubilee, he is capable then to communicate it to others,” said Archbishop Fisichella. His words in fact define the essence of  journalism: you have to be a witness to bear the truth to others. It is often not an easy task!

Now, it is the mission of the journalists of 2025, like me, to tell the world what is happening in Rome during this Jubilee Year of Hope.

The original manuscript is now preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library

*Anna Artymiak, a Polish Vatican journalist and correspondent for Inside the Vatican, will continue her “Jubilee Diary” during the Holy Year.