ROME — Before celebrating the Holy Year 2025, Pope Francis is asking Catholics around the world to set aside time in 2023 to study the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
Presenting the official logo of the Holy Year on June 28, Archbishop Rino Fisichella also announced the Pope’s plan to help Catholics prepare for the celebration: focus on the four constitutions issued by Vatican II in 2023; and focus on prayer in 2024.
The four constitutions of Vatican II are: Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (“Sacrosanctum Concilium”); Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (“Lumen Gentium”); Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (“Dei Verbum”); and Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (“Gaudium et Spes”).
Fisichella, whom the pope appointed to coordinate planning for the Holy Year, said: “A series of user-friendly resources, written in attractive language, are being produced to pique the curiosity of those who have no memory of the council, which was held in 1962. -65.
Details regarding the 2024 prayer year and spiritual preparation for the Jubilee are still being worked out, the Archbishop said.
The Vatican had already announced that Pope Francis had chosen “Pilgrims of Hope” as the theme for the Holy Year.
Held every 25 years since 1470, a holy year or jubilee is a time of pilgrimage, prayer, repentance and acts of mercy, based on the Old Testament tradition of a jubilee year of rest, forgiveness and renewal.
In February, the Vatican announced a global competition to design the logo for the Holy Year, and Fisichella unveiled it June 28 during a conference in the Sala Regia of the Apostolic Palace.
“A total of 294 applications were received from 213 cities and 48 different countries,” he said in prepared remarks. “The participants ranged in age from 6 to 83 years old. In fact, many hand-drawn drawings were received from children all over the world, and it was really moving to browse through these drawings which were the fruit of the imagination and out of simple faith.”
A commission “of iconographers, graphic designers, art and brand experts, architects and a few pastors” chose a design submitted by Giacomo Travisani, and Pope Francis approved it.
“The logo shows four stylized figures to indicate all of humanity from the four corners of the earth,” Fisichella said. “They each embrace, indicating the solidarity and fraternity which must unite peoples. Note that the first character is hung on the cross. The underlying waves are choppy to indicate that life’s pilgrimage is not always on calm waters.
Travisani, explaining the logo, said: “When I wanted to ‘personify’ hope, I immediately had a clear image: the cross; hope, I said to myself, is in the cross.
The four human figures are of different colors. Travisani said, “Red is love, action and sharing; orange-yellow is the color of human warmth; green evokes peace and balance; blue is the color of security and protection.
