Is the Vatican Jubilee living up to its promise?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

More than 30 million pilgrims are expected to visit The Vatican city this year, to pass through the Holy Door at St Peter's Basilica, opened especially for 2025.

In the Italian capital Rome, which surrounds The Vatican, officials have been planning for years to accommodate the extra tourists, including major disruption for locals, but three months in business leaders are reporting that figures are down 15% on the previous year.

The city's hotel association says accommodation rates are being lowered in the hope it will encourage more non-Jubilee visitors who may have been put off travelling.

But other businesses are cashing in - we hear from faith based tourist groups around the world who say they are doubling their bookings to Rome.

Produced and presented by Daniel Rosney

(Image: Faithful carry a wooden cross on Via della Conciliazione in Rome during the pilgrimage route to the Holy Door of St. Peter's basilica in the Vatican, as part of the Catholic Jubilee Year, on 22/02/25. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This was the moment on Christmas Eve last year, when Pope Francis in his wheelchair opened the huge bronze panelled holy door at St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City.
0:15.1	The Pope was opening the door to a Jubilee year in the Catholic Church, which is estimated to have around 1.2 billion followers
0:23.6	in the world. It's a special year for those of the faith, with tens of millions expected to pass
0:30.2	through the Holy Door. The Vatican describes it as the ultimate aim for pilgrims to cross the
0:36.0	threshold in order to be closer to Jesus.
0:41.7	I'm Daniel Rosni and on this edition of Business Daily, I'm going to look at how the
0:47.2	celebrations are affecting businesses in Rome, which has spent years preparing for an influx
0:53.0	of tourists. We expect something more from Jubilee.
0:56.8	We expect more people than the last year, but it wasn't in this way.
1:03.0	All of a sudden on TikTok, they were like, it's the year to go to Rome.
1:05.5	We're like, oh my God, delighted.
1:06.8	With Easter coming up and religious holidays, it's going to be even bigger.
1:11.0	We typically, in a given year, do about 12 to 1,500 clients.
1:14.8	This year we're nearly doubling that.
1:17.0	It's purely because of this one every 25-year event, which is the Jubilee's.
1:21.5	In this Jubilee year, officials were hoping for more than 30 million visitors to Rome,
1:27.2	which surrounds the world's smallest sovereign state, the Vatican City.
1:31.6	But just a few months in, were those numbers accurate?
1:38.6	These stone cobbled streets of Rome snake through the city, guiding visitors like myself to the monuments,
1:45.4	to the statues and to the fountains. There's so much history here, and it's hard to make
1:50.5	your way around without seeing guides holding umbrellas, tourists listening to translated information
1:56.0	on headsets, and people taking selfies by the newly reopened, Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon or the Coliseum.
	...

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