During the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, Pope Francis is calling on governments around the world to take initiatives to restore the dignity of prisoners that ‘go hand in hand with a concrete commitment to respect for the law’.

Pope Francis will open the Holy Door at Rome’s Rebibbia prison on December 26, the feast day of St. Stephen. This will be the second of the five Holy Doors that our Holy Father will open during the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, which will take place from December 24, 2024 – Christmas Eve – until January 6, 2026, the feast of the Epiphany.

According to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, prefect of the Dicastery of Evangelization, the opening of the Holy Door in the Roman prison will be “a symbol of all the prisons scattered around the world.”

“In the year of the Jubilee, we are called to be concrete signs of hope for many brothers and sisters living in circumstances of difficulty,” Archbishop Fisichella told reporters on Monday, directly quoting Pope Francis’ May 9 indictment. Non Spes Confundit (“Hope Never Disappoints”).

“I think of the prisoners who are deprived of their freedom, who feel every day the harshness and restrictions of detention, the lack of love and, in more than a few cases, the lack of respect,” he continued.

During the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, Pope Francis is calling on governments around the world to take initiatives to restore the dignity of prisoners that “go hand in hand with a concrete commitment to respect for the law.”

“I recommend that governments take initiatives to revive hope during the jubilee year, taking forms of amnesty or forgiveness that will help people regain their confidence in themselves and in society, ways of reintegrating into the community,” he says in the papal bulletin.

According to Archbishop Fisichella, Italy became the first country to sign an “amnesty” agreement with the Vatican that will come into force on the holy year of September 11.

“We have signed an agreement with the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Italy, Mr. Carlo Nordio, and the Government Commissioner, Mr. Roberto Gualtieri, to implement forms of reintegration in the jubilee year through the employment of many convicts in social commitment activities,” he said at the 28 October press conference.

The opening of the Holy Door in Rebibbia Prison on December 26 was the first time in the jubilee history of the Catholic Church that a pope opened the Holy Door in a prison, while Pope Francis also opened the “door of mercy” in a prison in Rome. During the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2015, he was kept in prison as a tangible sign of God’s forgiveness.

The other four Holy Doors of the 2025 Jubilee are St. Peter’s Basilica, St. Archbasilica of John Lateran, St. Basilica of Mary Major and St. It will be located in Paul’s Basilica.