The Jubilee of Redemption in 2033
Optional subtitle
The year 2033 will mark two thousand years since the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of all humankind. It is right that we should celebrate this anniversary as befits the Church He created.
What is a Jubilee?
The Jubilee is among the oldest practices in the life of God's people. Its roots are in the Book of Leviticus, where every fiftieth year was set apart as a year of release: debts forgiven, land restored, captives freed. The Church took up that pattern and deepened it. In 1300, Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first Christian Holy Year, and since then a Jubilee has been a year of grace, a summons to pilgrimage, to confession, to conversion, and to the reception of the Jubilee indulgence.
Ordinary Jubilees now fall every twenty-five years. The most recent was the Jubilee Year of Hope in 2025. But the Holy Father may also proclaim an extraordinary Jubilee outside that cycle, when the Church has particular reason to keep an anniversary of our salvation. That is what 2033 will be.
Why 2033?
The Church reckons the Redemption — the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord — to the year 33. The year 2033 is therefore the bimillennium of the central event of human history: the moment the world was redeemed.
This is not the first time the Church has kept such an anniversary, and the pattern is worth knowing.
- 1933 — Pope Pius XI proclaimed an extraordinary Jubilee with the bull Quod Nuper, marking 1,900 years of the Redemption. More than two million pilgrims came to Rome.
- 1983 — Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed the Jubilee Year of Redemption with the bull Aperite Portas Redemptori, marking 1,950 years.
Both were announced on the Feast of the Epiphany. 2033 completes that series, and does so at the two-thousandth year.
What Pope Leo XIV Has Asked
On November 29, 2025, while in Istanbul for the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Pope Leo XIV called Christians to journey together toward this anniversary. He expressed the hope that it be marked in Jerusalem, in the Upper Room, and he addressed the invitation not only to Catholics but to all Christians — making the road to 2033 a path of unity as well as of penance and thanksgiving.
At the Epiphany in 2026, the Holy Father signaled again that the next Holy Door to open will be for this Extraordinary Jubilee in 2033.
Seven years is not a long time to prepare for something two thousand years in the making. The preparation begins now, in parishes and dioceses and families — which is precisely what the Jubilee33 initiative exists to serve.
A Note on the Name
You will see this Jubilee called by several names, and it is worth understanding why.
The language coming from Rome and from Pope Leo XIV describes it as the Jubilee of Redemption, or the Holy Year of Redemption — an Extraordinary Jubilee marking the 2,000th anniversary of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord. Many of the movements and apostolates preparing for it, including Jubilee33, commonly call it the Great Jubilee of 2033.
A Jubilee is formally established by a papal document called a bull of indiction, which fixes the year's official title, its dates, and the conditions for receiving the Jubilee indulgence. No bull of indiction has yet been issued for 2033. Until one is, no title is definitively fixed and no indulgence conditions have been established. On this site we generally use the Jubilee of Redemption in 2033, and we note where partner organizations use the Great Jubilee of 2033 for the same thing. We will also use the term the Jubilee33 Journey to indicate the events and activities leading to this extraordinary jubilee.