Jubilee of Prisoners

The Jubilee of Prisoners will take place from 12-14 December 2025. In the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV will preside at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday 14 December.

Many such initiatives have been organized throughout the Jubilee. The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DSSUI) promoted the “Games of Hope,” organized by the John Paul II Foundation for Sport, for the Penitentiary Administration Department (DAP) and for the network of magistrates Sport e Legalitá.

The Games of Hope aim to be a “mini-olympiad in the prison.” In Rome, the first edition was celebrated “males only” on 13 June 2025, while the second edition will take place on 12 December in the Female Prison of Rebibbia. The sporting event involves four sporting groups (detainees, penitentiary police, magistrates and representatives of civil society) who will face each other in several sporting disciplines.

Concerning this initiative, Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, FMA, secretary of the DSSUI, affirmed that “for those living in detention, sport acquires an important value because it teaches respect, discipline, teamwork; helping one to recognize one’s own limits and to discover new energies. In the prison, sport is not only movement: it is an experience of possible freedom, relationship, of restored confidence.”

Recalling the theme of the Jubilee 2025, Sr. Smerilli added that “in the center of everything remains hope: the hope of one who hopes beyond the walls, hope is an interior conversion that gradually anticipates external liberation. The hope of one who chooses to get up again.”

For its part, the John Paul II Foundation for Sport explains that the initiative “Games of Hope” seeks to create “a replicable model also for other penitentiary institutions, in order to permit detained persons also to live in harmony and serenity this moment of play, but above all, to valve more and more sport as an instrument of personal growth and social reinsertion of those detained.”

In addition, initiatives for reflection are being held. On 19 November 2025 took place at the European University of Rome the Congress entitled “The reeducative function of the penalty and the value of sport in penitentiary treatment” to share “a moment of reflection on the principles of justice, of recuperation and of the dignity of the person, inserted in the road of the Jubilee Year as an expression of the formative and social mission of the University.”

On 12 December will take place the Congress “The right to hope in the 50^th Anniversary of the Penitentiary Regulations, in the year of the Jubilee of Hope and in the three days of the Jubilee of Prisoners” at the LUMSA University of Rome.

In addition, on 14 December will take place the musical comedy “Beyond the Bars” in the Auditorium Conciliazione, only a few steps from St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

The General Inspectorate of the Italian Prison Chaplains is organizing a program rich in initiatives at the Fraterna Domus de Sacrofano from 12-13 December.

In Germany, the German prison ministry has recompiled in a book entitled “Pilgrims of hope in prison: painting life in new colour” the contributions of hope, in the form of pictures, poems, songs and writings, of women prisoners in Germany. The book will be given to Pope Leo XIV, on the occasion of the general audience of 10 December, by the President of the Association of German Prison Ministry, Sr. Andreas Bär, by the head of International Relations Office, Sr. Doris Schäfer, and by the Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus of Würzburg, H. E. Mons Ulrich Boom.

In addition, the Indian prison ministry will be represented in Rome in the jubilee days by a delegation of prison ministers in India (Prison Ministry India) composed of Fr. Francis Kodiyan, MCBC, Fr. Varghese Karipperi, the Honorable Amalorpava Lourdu Mary Arokiyasami and Prof. Frank Edmung John Bernard.

Recently in New Delhi was celebrated the Prison Ministry India Jubilee Convention, that concluded with a call to restore dignity and hope to prisoners.

Also present at the Jubilee of Prisoners will be International Commission for Catholic Prisoners Pastoral Care (ICCPPCC) with its president, the Canon Brian Gowans, with the acting General Secretary, Sr. Doris Schäfer, and with the member of the Executive Committee Fr. Elie Nasr of Lebanon. These also wish to offer to the Holy Father a book published on the occasion of the 70^th anniversary of the ICCPPCC with articles and writings compiled by prison chaplains.

Besides, the head of the prison ministry of Brazil, Sr. Petra Pfaller, will be present in Rome for the Jubilee with the intention of bringing the Holy Father the greetings of the mothers in the prisons of Latin America and their stories of suffering.