Jubilee 2025 Pilgrimage Sites

In the Diocese of Fort Worth, Bishop Michael F. Olson, STD, MA, has designated the following five locations as Pilgrimage Sites for the duration of the ordinary Jubilee Year 2025 called for by His Holiness Pope Francis.

Decree 2025 Jubilee Sites
The Jubilee Prayer

What is a Jubilee? When is the Jubilee? How can I participate?

What is an Indulgence? How can I receive the Indulgence?

Pilgrimage Sites

 

What is a Jubilee?

A Jubilee is an ancient tradition of a special Holy Year proclaimed by the pope to experience a “lively experience of grace and hope” through pilgrimage, indulgences, the sacrament of reconciliation and acts of love and service.

A pilgrimage, whether to Rome or closer to home, is a central component of every Jubilee. “Setting out on a journey is traditionally associated with our human quest for meaning in life,” Pope Francis stated.

(Source: “Spes non Confundit,” the Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025.)

 

When is the Jubilee?

Pope Francis inaugurated the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025 by opening the Holy Door of the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican on Christmas Eve, 2024. The Jubilee will close in churches in the diocese on December 28, 2025, and Pope Francis will close the Holy Door of Saint Peter on January 6, 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.

 

How can I participate?

If you aren’t one of the estimated 35 million pilgrims expected to visit Rome during the Jubilee of 2025, Bishop Michael Olson has designated five churches (listed above) in the Diocese of Fort Worth as sacred Jubilee sites for reconciliation, Holy Mass, or Eucharistic Adoration.

The faithful can obtain a Jubilee indulgence for devout visits to sacred sites.

 

What is an Indulgence?

After eternal punishment — separation from God — has been forgiven in the confessional, the disorder and unhealthy attachments created by sin can still remain. This is known as temporal punishment, and purification from temporal punishment can occur in this life or in purgatory.

The Church identifies penance, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, good works, and sacrifices as means to satisfy temporal punishment. Another way is an indulgence, a special grace to free oneself from temporal punishment.

An indulgence, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church….” (1471)

 

How can I receive the Indulgence?

To obtain a plenary, or full, indulgence for yourself or a faithful departed in purgatory, the individual must be in a state of grace and:

• Have the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin
• Receive the sacraments of reconciliation and Holy Eucharist within 20 days before or after receiving the indulgence
• Pray for the pope’s intentions
• And make a pilgrimage to attend a liturgy or Eucharistic Adoration at a sacred Jubilee site or participate in works of mercy and penance.

By practicing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, Catholics are “tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind,” according to Pope Francis.

The Jubilee plenary indulgence may also be obtained through penitential acts, recommending that the penitential nature of Friday be observed through abstaining from entertainment and social media or from excessive consumption and donating a proportionate sum of money to the poor.

For those who cannot participate due to illness, imprisonment, or advanced age can obtain the Jubilee Indulgence through prayer and offering up the hardships of their life.

Typically, only one plenary indulgence is allowed per day, but “the faithful who have carried out an act of charity on behalf of the souls in purgatory, if they receive Holy Communion a second time that day, can obtain the plenary indulgence twice on the same day, applicable only to the deceased.... Through this double act, a praiseworthy exercise of supernatural charity is carried out, through that bond by which the faithful still journeying on this earth are united in the mystical Body of Christ with those who have already completed their journey....”

(Source: Decree on the granting of the Indulgence during the ordinary Jubilee Year 2025 called by His Holiness Pope Francis)