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.
What is the Holy Door?
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.
Why it’s significant that the Holy Door will be open for Pope Francis’ funeral
On Dec 24, 2024, Francis was presented with his own documents, as the Holy Father declared an extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2015. Only Pope Boniface IX and the beatified Pope John Paul II have celebrated two Jubilees during their pontificate.
Francis has the distinction of being the only pontiff to open the door without then closing it, though previous popes have died after declaring a Jubilee Year but before opening the door, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
Pope Urban VI, Pope Paul II, Pope Paul III and Pope Clement XIV each declared Jubilee Years that commenced and concluded after their deaths, NCR reported.
Only Urban VI has been buried with the Holy Doors open, as he fell too ill to attend the ceremony in 1699 and died in 1700, leaving Pope Clement XI to close the door, according to that outlet.
As Francis laid in state on Saturday, the door remained open to the right of the right side of the altar.
What is the purpose behind the Holy Door?
The iconic portal is meant to signify a welcoming of religious pilgrims into the arms of the church and was conceived as a direct reference to a line in the Gospel of John, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.”
Catholic pilgrims are able to actually use the Vatican’s Holy Door, passing through to attain forgiveness of sins and “plenary indulgences,” which the Church says remove all Earthly punishment for already forgiven sins.
The open-armed gesture of the Holy Door embodies both the “universality” of the Catholic Church and the legacy of Pope Francis, who used his lofty perch atop history’s longest-lasting institution to highlight the plight of the less fortunate.
Francis demonstrated his unabiding love for his flock throughout his pontificate — notably, embracing and caressing a man with a deformity in St. Peter’s Square, washing the feet of a Muslim prisoner and kissing the feet of rival South Sudanese rivals to try and get them to make peace.
In 2016, Pope Francis visited a refugee camp on the Greek Island Lesbos and brought 12 Syrian refugees on his plane back to Rome. Wafaa Eid, who was one of the 12, said Pope Francis was “like an angel,” the BBC reported.
Despite his deteriorating condition, Francis made frequent calls to the Catholic parish in Gaza during his lengthy stay at Gemelli Hospital, Vatican News reported.
The late pope also challenged exclusionary practices of distributing the Eucharist within the Church, advocating that single mothers and divorced Catholics should not be denied the holy sacrament.
Pope Francis is set to be buried on Saturday in a ceremony at St. Peter’s Basilica attended by thousands, including President Trump, former President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
