Pope Leo’s thanksgiving at the end of the year (Photos)

Leading for the first time the liturgy of thanksgiving at the end of the year, Pope Leo spoke of the mysterious and beautiful plan of God in giving Jesus to the world at the “fullness of time.”

This plan was carried out, he said, with Mary, such that God’s “hope” was intertwined with the hope of Mary, “descendant of Abraham according to the flesh and above all according to faith.”

The Pope invited the faithful to give thanks to God for the Jubilee year now ending.

The liturgy concluded with the singing of the Te Deum, in thanksgiving for the past year. 

The celebration was attended by the Mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, who was heavily involved in organizing the Jubilee, which attracted more than 30 million visitors to the city over the past 12 months.

At the end of the liturgy, following tradition, the Pope went in a car to the entrance of St Peter’s Square to pray before the nativity scene. This year’s came from the Salerno region, near Naples.

The Swiss Guard band played famous Christmas carols and the president of the Governorate of Vatican City State, Sister Raffaella Petrini, pointed out certain elements of the Nativity scene. The Holy Father was then able to climb onto the platform of the Nativity to be close to the Baby Jesus figurine, and from there he blessed the crowd.

Leo then spent a long time blessing onlookers, hugging children, and even joking with a White Sox fan about hopes for better luck next year for the team.

Below is a working translation of his homily provided by Aleteia. The official transcription in Italian is available here.

Dear brothers and sisters!

The liturgy of the First Vespers of the Mother of God is uniquely rich, deriving both from the dizzying mystery it celebrates and from its placement at the very end of the calendar year. The antiphons of the psalms and the Magnificat insist on the paradoxical event of a God born of a virgin, or, put another way, on the divine motherhood of Mary. At the same time, this solemnity, which concludes the Octave of Christmas, covers the passage from one year to the next and extends over it the blessing of the One “who was, who is, and who is to come” (Rev 1:8). Moreover, today we celebrate it at the end of the Jubilee Year, in the heart of Rome, at the Tomb of Peter, and so the Te Deum that will soon resound in this Basilica will want to expand to give voice to all the hearts and faces that have passed under these vaults and through the streets of this city.

We have heard in the biblical reading one of the astonishing summaries of the Apostle Paul: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5). This way of presenting the mystery of Christ makes one think of a plan, a great plan for human history. A mysterious plan, but with a clear center, like a high mountain illuminated by the sun in the middle of a dense forest: this center is the “fullness of time.”

And it is precisely this word — ‘plan’ — that is echoed in the canticle of the Letter to the Ephesians: “The plan to bring all things in heaven and on earth together in Christ. In his kindness he had predestined us to this in him, to be realized in the fullness of time” (Eph 1:9-10).

Sisters, brothers, in our time we feel the need for a wise, benevolent, merciful plan. May it be a free and liberating, peaceful, faithful plan, like the one the Virgin Mary proclaimed in her canticle of praise: “His mercy is from generation to generation / on those who fear him” (Lk 1:50).

Other plans, however, today as yesterday, envelop the world. They are instead strategies aimed at conquering markets, territories, and areas of influence. Armed strategies, cloaked in hypocritical speeches, ideological proclamations, and false religious motives.

But the Holy Mother of God, the smallest and highest among creatures, sees things with the eyes of God: She sees that with the power of his arm, the Most High scatters the plots of the proud, overturns the powerful from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, fills the hands of the hungry with good things and empties those of the rich (cf. Lk 1:51-53).

The Mother of Jesus is the woman with whom God, in the fullness of time, wrote the Word that reveals the mystery. He did not impose it: he first proposed it to her heart and, having received her “yes,” he wrote it with ineffable love in her flesh. Thus, God’s hope was intertwined with the hope of Mary, descendant of Abraham according to the flesh and above all according to faith.

God loves to hope with the hearts of little ones, and he does so by involving them in his plan of salvation. The more beautiful the plan, the greater the hope. And in fact, the world goes on like this, driven by the hope of so many simple people, unknown but not to God, who despite everything believe in a better tomorrow, because they know that the future is in the hands of the One who offers them the greatest hope.

One of these people was Simon, a fisherman from Galilee, whom Jesus called Peter. God the Father gave him such a sincere and generous faith that the Lord was able to build his community on it (cf. Mt 16:18). And we are still here today praying at his tomb, where pilgrims from all over the world come to renew their faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This has happened in a special way during the Holy Year that is coming to an end.

The Jubilee is a great sign of a new world, renewed and reconciled according to God’s plan. And in this plan, Providence has reserved a special place for this city of Rome. Not because of its glories, not because of its power, but because Peter and Paul and so many other martyrs shed their blood here for Christ. That is why Rome is the city of the Jubilee.

What can we wish for Rome? That it may live up to its little ones. To children, to the lonely and frail elderly, to families who struggle to get by, to men and women who have come from afar hoping for a dignified life.

Today, dear friends, let us thank God for the gift of the Jubilee, which has been a great sign of his plan of hope for humanity and the world. And let us thank all those who, in the months and days of 2025, worked to serve pilgrims and to make Rome more welcoming. This was the hope of our beloved Pope Francis a year ago. I would like it to be so again, and I would say even more so after this time of grace. May this city, animated by Christian hope, be at the service of God’s plan of love for the human family. May the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, Salus Populi Romani, obtain this for us.