Every year since 1968, the Catholic Church celebrates World Day of Peace on January 1. Dedicated to universal peace, this celebration focuses our individual and collective minds and hearts on creating a culture of care in our lives, and in our local and global communities.
Each year the Pope offers an important Message to observe World Day of Peace. Speaking to the deepest need of our shared humanity, his Message leans into and addresses the realities of our day—matching the call to love with the needs and rising issues of the year.
This year, Pope Francis has chosen to align the 2025 World Day of Peace Message with the 2025 Jubilee: On December 24th we enter the Year of Jubilee 2025 as “Pilgrims of Hope.” The Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development states the World Day of Peace 2025 Message is inspired “above all by the concepts of Hope and Forgiveness, which are at the heart of the Jubilee, a time for conversion that calls us not to condemn, but instead to bring about reconciliation and peace.”
The theme of World Day of Peace 2025 is “Forgive Us Our Trespasses: Grant Us Your Peace.”
This Message calling for forgiveness and pleading for peace is core to our faith and aligns with Encyclicals from Pope Francis. The Dicastery states it “is inspired in particular by the Encyclical Letters Laudato si’ and Fratelli Tutti.” In these Letters, Pope Francis offers a stinging yet hope-filled rebuke of the destructive individual and collective choices and actions of humankind. We are directed toward fraternity and social friendship to build a better, more just and peaceful world, with the commitment of all: people, institutions, the economic world, international organizations, civil society.
The Dicastery states, “when considering the reality of conflicts and social sins afflicting humanity today in light of the hope inherent in the Jubilee tradition of forgiveness of sins and the cancellation of debts… concrete principles emerge that can lead to a much needed spiritual, social, economic, ecological and cultural change.”
“Only from a genuine conversion on all levels—personal, local and international—will true peace be able to flourish, not only in the cessation of conflicts but also in a new reality in which wounds are healed and each person’s dignity is recognized.”
As we sit today, mid-Advent 2024, on the threshold of the Jubilee Year, we are invited to engage in and prepare for this new reality. Advent is a time of preparation; a time to direct our hearts and minds to the coming of Christ. We prayerfully prepare and wait to receive Christ yesterday, celebrating his birth as a child—today, recognizing and caring for Christ in those suffering and in need—and tomorrow, anticipating and being ready for Christ’s coming at the end of time.
We must open our eyes and our hearts to see the needs of our day—immigration, homelessness, war, poverty, polarization, inequity, racism. It is hard. It is messy. It is laden with conflict. Yet, it is here that we are called to engage in love and find hope—each in our own way.
As we walk through Advent, our hearts and minds are drawn toward the promise of the hope, peace, joy, and love of Christ. We are reminded it is in humility, in a stance of repentance and forgiveness, that we find these gifts.
Together, throughout this 2025 Year of Jubilee, let us pray for the grace to ask for forgiveness and be open to God’s peace.
Janice Andersen
Director of Christian Life