What is the Holy Door in the Vatican, which Pope Francis became first to leave open?
Even in death, Pope Francis remained a trailblazer — becoming the only pontiff to open, but not close, the Holy Door of St.Peter’s Basilica in what has become a fateful symbol of his papal legacy.The Holy Door was opened on Dec.
24, 2024, to mark a Jubilee Year and the start of the 2025 Holy Year — with Francis seen at the ceremony humbly sitting in a wheelchair as he passed through the ornate bronze doors as they were opened to religious pilgrims from around the world.Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, died Easter Monday at age 88, about a month after he was released from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, where he had spent 38 days battling a bilateral lung infection.The Holy Door resides in the northernmost point of St.
Peter’s Church and is unused except in Jubilee years.The current doors were installed in 1950 and were designed by Vico Consorti.
They depict scenes from the New Testament that represent the passage from sin to grace.Though similar ritualized door openings took place on Christmas Eve last year at the Basilica of St.John Lateran, St.
Paul Outside the Walls and St.Mary Major, which are all located in Rome — the opening of the Holy Door of the Vatican is marked by a unique ceremony.It begins with the unsealing of the grand doorway, which is shut tight from the inside with wood and cement in between Jubilees, and needs to be torn down by Vatican workers.Within the broadly built seal, presiding popes hide a metal box containing holy documents and relics from the previous Jubilee, which are presented to the pope during the next one.The Holy Door’s time capsule includes parchment deeds, Vatican medals, gold-covered bricks and all the relevant keys and door handles for the public ceremony, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.On Dec 24, 2024, Francis was presented with his own documents, as the Holy Father declared an extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2015.
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