PASTORAL LETTER OF THE APOSTOLIC PREFECT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AZERBAIJAN, MOST REVEREND BISHOP VLADIMIR FEKETE FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE 2025 JUBILEE YEAR

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Dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ!
 
The year 2025 will be celebrated as a Holy or Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church throughout the world. Many may wonder: how should we understand this, and what is the real meaning of the Jubilee Year?
 
In the Old Testament, in the book of Leviticus, we hear the call of the Lord God to accept every fiftieth year as a year of reconciliation with God and with our neighbors. In the jubilee years, the Israelites were to seek and ask for peace with God and with each other, as well as to renew their fidelity to God’s Law and thus correct everything that had been broken or distorted due to sin and human weakness.
In 1300, Pope Boniface VIII introduced this ancient biblical tradition into the life of the Catholic Church under the name of the Holy or Jubilee Year. At first, the jubilee was planned to be celebrated every hundred years. Pope Clement VI decreed that it should be celebrated every half century. But in order for every person to be able to take part in these celebrations at least once in their life, Pope Paul II decided in 1470 to celebrate the Jubilee Year once every twenty-five years.
 
The celebration of the Holy Year is always associated with a call to make a pilgrimage to the shrines of Rome, Jerusalem or other places of Christian worship declared as such by local bishops.
The Church invites us this year to renew our faith and spiritual life, to heal the wounds in our relationships with our neighbors, and to receive special indulgences dedicated to the Jubilee Year. The rules for receiving them are specified in the Decree of the Apostolic Penitentiary of May 23, 2024, and their application in the conditions of the Apostolic Prefecture in Azerbaijan is published in the corresponding Decree of December 8, 2024.
 
The Jubilee Year 2025 will be held under the motto “Pilgrims of Hope”. Therefore, we all have to experience this year as a pilgrimage in hope, which we will rediscover for ourselves and share with others.
The Jubilee Year will begin with the deeply symbolic gesture of opening the Holy Doors in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Apostle John says in his Gospel that the gate of the sheepfold, that is, the Church, is Jesus himself: “I am the door: if anyone enters through me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture” (Jn 10:9).
The Jubilee is a time of grace when we open the doors of our hearts, our homes and our communities to Christ, and we ourselves enter into that living sanctuary that is Jesus, in order to experience in Him the love of God, the joy of communion with God and with one another in Him. “For everyone, let this be a moment of living and personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the “door” of salvation (Jn 10:7, 9); with Him whom the Church has the mission to proclaim always, everywhere and to everyone as “our hope” (1 Tim 1:1)” (Francis, Bull “Spes non confundit”, 1).
 
Hope gives our poor life an infinite, eternal perspective. This is indicated by the symbol of the anchor, which Christian iconography has always used to represent hope. We find this image in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Hope is a sure and steadfast anchor for our souls, which penetrates into the sanctuary behind the curtain through which Jesus entered before us” (cf. Heb 6:19-20).
There is no room for hope in our lives if forgiveness and reconciliation do not reign in them. Oh, how we need this! We allow ourselves to live days, months, years without forgiveness and reconciliation! And Saint Augustine says: “In order that our life may become glorious, let us ask for forgiveness of our sins. People who have no hope see their own sins all the less, and seek them all the more quickly in their neighbors. And they seek them not in order to destroy evil, but in order to condemn them. Finding no justification for themselves, they are ready to blame others.
It is hope that moves us to repentance. May this Jubilee Year be a time when we rediscover the beauty, hope and greatness of the sacrament of penance. I call on all priests to take care to make confession more accessible to the faithful in every way.
The truth of the Gospel encourages us not to dwell only on our own moral dilemmas or practical difficulties, but always to remember those who are having a harder time than us. In our communities, there are those who have lost loved ones, who are lonely, or who have become outcasts because of divisions within families. More and more people who have been forced to flee from threats to their lives, having lost their jobs, homes and prospects for the future turn to us. Among us, there are those who are discouraged and despondent because of their inability to come to terms with the difficult reality on their own. “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (cf. Gal 6:2). Within the Church we cannot solve all the problems, but we can share bread, time, prayer and Holy Communion with each other – and this can be saving both for other people and for ourselves.
 
The Jubilee Year in our Apostolic Prefecture coincides with another significant date: on September 14, 2025, we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of our local Church as “Missio suiu iuris bakuensis” and the entrustment of its guardianship by the Holy See to the religious congregation of the Salesians of Don Bosco. For us, this is a joyful opportunity to thank God for the revival of the Catholic Church in Azerbaijan after many years of persecution, and for the many fruits we have seen during these years. A quarter of a century is a very short time in history, but we know that in the eyes of the Lord “one day is like a thousand years”, so even a small good deed, if given to God, can change the whole world.
 
This is our true, effective hope! “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). May this year awaken in us the desire to be captured by the risen Christ, so that no defeat, failure or suffering can stop our journey to the fullness of life. May this Jubilee Year help us to rediscover our vocation and mission, and may it help young people who are still searching for their path in life to feel the joyful wonder that Christ is calling them and the determination to walk courageously along the path of their vocation.
 
Our Lady, Mother of Hope, immaculately conceived and assumpted with body and soul into heaven, accompany us in all our steps.
 
Come, Holy Spirit, come through Mary. Veni Sancte Spiritus, veni per Mariam.
 
Receive a blessing for the pastoral year that we have begun — in the name of the + Father, and the + Son, and the + Holy Spirit.
 
+ Vladimir Fekete SDB
 
Bishop of Municipa and Apostolic Prefect in Azerbaijan
In the city of Baku, December 8, 2024