I am so proud of being a Special Guest of Digital Missionaries and Catholics Influencers for a landmark gathering of prayer, formation, and fraternity last July 28/29 in Vatican City, thanks to Mons. Lucio Ruiz, Secretary of Dicastery for Communication.
I had the chance to share thoughts with my beloved his Eminency Card. Parolin and to get the special blessing from Pope Leone.
The Catholic Jubilee, also known as a Holy Year, is a deeply spiritual tradition in the Catholic Church that offers a time of renewal, forgiveness, and grace.
Rooted in the ancient biblical custom described in Leviticus 25, the Jubilee was traditionally celebrated every 50 years as a time for liberty, debt forgiveness, and renewal. The Catholic Church adopted this concept in 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII declared the first Christian Jubilee, offering remission of sins to pilgrims visiting Rome.
Since then, ordinary Jubilees occur every 25 years, while extraordinary Jubilees are called for special occasions – like Pope Francesco’s Jubilee of Mercy in 2015.
With the theme “Pilgrims of Hope,” the Jubilee of 2025 is poised to draw millions of faithful to Rome, beginning on December 24, 2024, and concluding on January 6, 2026.
The Church invited the faithful to embrace the Jubilee’s theme of hope, amid global crises and personal struggles. In recent statements, the Pope emphasized that “the Jubilee a time of grace, peace, and spiritual renewal for all”.
Originally declared by Pope Francesco, the Jubilee now unfolds under the leadership of Pope Leone XIV, following the death of Francesco on April 21, 2025. Elected on May 8, 2025, Pope Leone XIV formerly – Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost – became the first American pope in history, bringing a fresh pastoral tone and a deep commitment to unity and mercy.
For the first time in its history, the Catholic Church has celebrated a Jubilee event within a Holy Year specifically dedicated to digital missionaries and Catholic influencers, formally recognising the digital environment as a true field of mission. The gathering took place in Rome on July 28 and 29, 2025, coinciding with the opening days of the Youth Jubilee. Many young people who evangelise through social media are actively involved in both celebrations.
This unprecedented initiative, organised by the Dicastery for Communication, has bring together nearly one thousand digital missionaries from around the world, with strong representation from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. These evangelizers proclaim the joy of the Gospel through social media, video platforms, blogs, and apps, offering a creative, accessible, and engaged Christian witness within the digital continent.
This initiative emerged in response to Pope Francescos’s call during the Synod on Synodality (2021 – 2024), which emphasised the importance of bringing the Good News into the digital world and ensuring no one is excluded from the synodal journey. It stands as a clear expression of a missionary Church, one that reaches out to the existential peripheries of contemporary society.
The Jubilee program unfolded in three key phases. The spiritual component centred on the pilgrimage through the Holy Door – a hallmark of every Holy Year and a sign of interior renewal and openness to grace.
This was followed by a formative phase, which featured keynote presentations, workshops, and testimonies at the Auditorium Conciliazione. These sessions aimed to provide pastoral tools for digital mission and foster spaces for shared reflection
The final phase was a celebratory moment: a festival in Piazza Risorgimento highlighting art, music, and creativity as dynamic languages of evangelisation and communion in the digital sphere.
The Jubilee builds upon the first global gathering of digital evangelizers, held during World Youth Day in Lisbon in 2023. That event gave rise to an international network of missionaries, which is now being strengthened and projected toward the future through this Jubilee initiative.
