Vatican
On Wednesday, 31 December, the last day of the year, Pope Leo XIV presided over the First Vespers of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, his final celebration of 2025.
In St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, with roughly 5,500 of the faithful in attendance, the Pope said that the evening’s liturgy possesses “a singular richness that flows both from the awe-inspiring mystery it celebrates and from its place at the end of the civil year.”
“When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” This biblical passage from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, read out during the vespers, was at the centre of Pope Leo’s homily.
The Pope said that this way of presenting the mystery of Christ “calls to mind a great plan for human history—a mysterious plan, but one with a clear center, like a high mountain lit by the sun in the midst of a dense forest: the ‘fullness of time.’”
Today, in a society weighed down by the burden of sin, we keenly feel “the need for a wise, benevolent, merciful plan”, the Pope said.
However, he warned, there are other plans at work in the world: “strategies aimed at conquering markets, territories, and spheres of influence; armed strategies, concealed beneath hypocritical rhetoric, ideological proclamations, and false religious motives.”
In St Peter’s Basilica, speaking before the recitation of the traditional thanksgiving hymn of the Te Deum, Pope Leo expressed his gratitude to God for the “gift of the Jubilee, which has been a powerful sign of his plan of hope for humanity and for the world.”
He also offered thanks to all those who, throughout the months and days of 2025, worked at the service of pilgrims to make Rome more welcoming.
This hospitality was, Pope Leo said, the wish Pope Francis expressed a year ago. “I would like it to continue to be so—and I would even say, all the more so after this period of grace”.
The city of Rome and the blood of the martyrs
Pope Leo noted that “the Jubilee is a great sign of a new world, renewed and reconciled according to God’s plan.”
And “within this plan, Providence has reserved a special place for this city of Rome—not because of its glories, not because of its power, but because Peter and Paul and so many other martyrs shed their blood here for Christ. That is why Rome is the city of the Jubilee”.
Pope Leo expressed the hope that the city would take care of the poor and weak: “May this city, animated by Christian hope, be at the service of God’s plan of love for the human family.”
Following the liturgy, the Pope then went out to St. Peter’s Square to pray before the nativity scene there and to greet the faithful and pilgrims who had gathered.
