Rome needs a small miracle to pull off the Vatican’s jubilee

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Italian television presenter Giulia Avataneo was elated last year when she found a small, affordable apartment in Rome just 10 minutes from her workplace in a neighbourhood near the Vatican.

But less than a year after she moved in, the landlord wanted her out again. His aim: to convert the flat into a short-term holiday rental for pilgrims coming to Rome for the Catholic Jubilee — a holy year of forgiveness.

During the jubilee, which starts on Christmas Eve and concludes on January 6 2026, the Vatican will grant plenary indulgences — exemptions from punishment for sins — to penitents who visit designated sacred sites, including at least one of Rome’s four papal basilicas.

Nearly 32mn pilgrims are expected, adding to pressure on a city already suffering from a residential housing shortage, as flats are turned into Airbnbs for a post-pandemic tourist boom. 

“So many people have experienced the same thing,” Avataneo says of her eviction. “It’s extremely difficult to find affordable long-term accommodation. Everybody is renting short term — for a month or two — because of the jubilee.”

Even Rome residents with secure housing are dreading the impact of the jubilee on a city where infrastructure and public services — from transport to trash collection — are already stretched to breaking point. “It’s like hosting the Olympics,” lamented one resident, “except it’s going to last for an entire year.” 

After the first holy year proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, jubilees were initially held every half century, and from 1450 every 25 years, with occasional delays or ‘extraordinary’ jubilees for special occasions.

“It has become one of the main ways for the Vatican to remind Catholics that their eyes, minds or hearts should be oriented towards Rome,” says Massimo Faggioli, a theology professor at Villanova University.  

This jubilee comes at a critical juncture for the Vatican. Its finances are under severe strain from declining donations and chronic mismanagement. Despite Pope Francis’s persistent cost-cutting, the Holy See has been running a yawning budget deficit. The Vatican pension fund is also in crisis. 

However, the influx of pilgrims — and the licensing of the jubilee logo for merchandise ranging from wooden wall maps of Rome to “papal” olive oil — will generate new revenues. “Right now, the Vatican is running out of money,” said Faggioli. “They need this lifeline like never before.” 

Rome’s secular authorities are racing to ready the city. The Italian government has allocated €4.8bn for jubilee-related public works, including a road underpass first planned for the 2000 Jubilee.

But some of the ambitious works have been deferred. Of the remaining 322 projects deemed ‘essential’, just a handful are complete. Though many are being inaugurated in the coming days, much of Rome still resembles a vast construction site.

“The project went from a huge ambitious plan to redevelop a lot of Rome for the jubilee and was whittled down to ‘what was feasible’,” said Angelica Donati, president of the youth wing of the National Builders’ Association. “It’s a missed opportunity.”

Employers are being encouraged to embrace working from home to ease traffic. But that is no comfort to Avataneo, who must get to an office and now lives so far away that she has to drive — while paying nearly twice her old rent.

“The Vatican should do more,” she griped. “It’s because of them that the city is becoming unbearable for almost everyone else.”

But mayor Roberto Gualtieri insists the Jubilee will leave a positive legacy — even if projects are finished after the holy year. “Rome would not be what it is without past jubilees,” he says, noting that many of the city’s most beautiful “monuments, fountains, and bridges” were jubilee projects.

Rome’s contemporary government is also determined to make the best of the occasion. “The jubilee exists,” Gualtieri said. “It’s not something you decide to host or not. It exists — and one has to make peace with this.”

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