Below is Pope Francis’ Message for the 58th World Day of Peace, which will be celebrated on 1 January 2025, entitled Forgive us our trespasses, grant us your peace: Forgive us our trespasses, grant us your peace.
I. Listening to the cry of threatened humanity
1. At the beginning of this new year which our heavenly Father has given us, a Jubilee time dedicated to hope, I address my most sincere wish for peace to every woman and man, in particular to those who feel prostrated by their own existential condition, condemned by their own errors, crushed by the judgment of others, and who no longer manage to see any prospect for their own lives. To all of you, hope and peace, because this is a Year of grace that comes from the Heart of the Redeemer.
2. In 2025, the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, an event that fills hearts with hope. The “jubilee” goes back to an ancient Jewish tradition, when the sound of a ram’s horn — yobel in Hebrew — announced, every forty-nine years, a year of mercy and liberation for all the people (cf. Lev 25:10). This solemn call was ideally to resound throughout the world (cf. Lev 25:9), to reestablish God’s justice in different areas of life: in the use of the land, in the possession of goods, in relations with one’s neighbor, especially with regard to the poorest and those who had fallen into disgrace. The sound of the horn reminded all the people — those who were rich and those who had become poor — that no person comes into the world to be oppressed; We are brothers and sisters, children of the same Father, born to be free according to the will of the Lord (cf. Lev 25:17,25,43,46,55).
3. Today too, the Jubilee is an event that impels us to seek God’s liberating justice throughout the earth. At the beginning of this Year of Grace, instead of the horn, we would like to listen to the “desperate cry for help” which, like the voice of the blood of righteous Abel, rises from many parts of the earth (cf. Gen 4:10), and which God never fails to hear. We too feel called to be the voice of so many situations of exploitation of the earth and oppression of our neighbours. Such injustices often take the form of what Saint John Paul II defined as “structures of sin”, because they are not only due to the iniquity of a few, but have been consolidated – so to speak – and are sustained by widespread complicity.
4. Each of us must feel in some way responsible for the devastation to which our common home is subjected, beginning with those actions that, even if only indirectly, fuel the conflicts that are ravaging humanity. In this way, systemic challenges, distinct but interconnected, that ravage our planet are fostered and intertwined. I am thinking in particular of disparities of all kinds, the inhuman treatment of migrants, environmental degradation, the confusion guiltily generated by misinformation, the rejection of all forms of dialogue, and the huge investments in the military industry. These are all factors that pose a concrete threat to the existence of humanity as a whole. Therefore, at the beginning of this year we want to listen to this cry of humanity so that all of us, together and individually, feel called to break the chains of injustice and thus proclaim God’s justice. An occasional act of philanthropy is not enough. On the contrary, cultural and structural changes are needed so that lasting change can also be achieved.
II. A cultural change: we are all debtors
5. The Jubilee event invites us to undertake various changes in order to confront the current state of injustice and inequality, reminding us that the goods of the earth are not destined only for a few privileged people, but for everyone. It may be useful to recall what St. Basil of Caesarea wrote: “Tell me, what is yours? Where did you get it from and put it in your life? […] Did you not come naked from your mother’s womb? Will you not return naked to the earth? Where do your present goods come from? If you say that they are from chance, you are impious, because you do not recognize the Creator, nor do you give thanks to the one who gave them to you”. When gratitude is lacking, man fails to recognize God’s gifts. However, the Lord, in his infinite mercy, does not abandon men who sin against him; rather he confirms the gift of life with the forgiveness of salvation, offered to all through Jesus Christ. For this reason, teaching us the “Our Father”, Jesus invites us to ask: “Forgive our offenses” ( Mt 6:12).
6. When a person ignores his or her bond with the Father, he or she begins to entertain the idea that relationships with others can be governed by a logic of exploitation, where the strongest claim the right to abuse the weakest. Just as the elites in Jesus’ time took advantage of the suffering of the poorest, so today in the interconnected global village, the international system, if it is not nourished by a logic of solidarity and interdependence, generates injustices, exacerbated by corruption, which ensnare the poorest countries. The logic of the exploitation of the debtor also succinctly describes the current “debt crisis” affecting various countries, especially in the global South.
7. I never tire of repeating that foreign debt has become an instrument of control, through which some governments and private financial institutions in the richest countries have no qualms about indiscriminately exploiting the human and natural resources of the poorest countries in order to satisfy the demands of their own markets. In addition, various populations, more burdened by international debt, are also forced to bear the weight of the ecological debt of the most developed countries. Ecological debt and foreign debt are two sides of the same coin in this logic of exploitation that culminates in the debt crisis. Thinking about this Jubilee Year, I invite the international community to undertake actions to remit foreign debt, recognizing the existence of an ecological debt between the North and the South of the world. This is a call for solidarity, but above all for justice.
8. The cultural and structural change that will enable us to overcome this crisis will come about when we finally recognize ourselves as children of the Father and confess to Him that we are all debtors, but also that we are all necessary, in need of one another, according to a logic of shared and diversified responsibility. We will be able to discover “definitively that we need one another and owe one another”.
III. A path of hope: three possible actions
9. If we allow our hearts to be touched by these necessary changes, the Jubilee Year of Grace will be able to reopen the path of hope for each one of us. Hope is born from the experience of God’s mercy, which is always unlimited.
God, who owes nothing to anyone, continues to bestow unceasing grace and mercy on all men. Isaac of Nineveh, a Father of the Eastern Church in the seventh century, wrote: “Your love is greater than my sins. The waves of the sea are insignificant compared to the number of my sins; but when we weigh my sins, they are as nothing compared to your love.”God does not calculate the evil committed by man, but is immensely “rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us” ( Eph 2:4). At the same time, he hears the cry of the poor and of the earth. It would be enough to pause for a moment, at the beginning of this year, and think of the grace with which he forgives our sins and forgives all our debts, so that our hearts may be filled with hope and peace.
10. For this reason, in the prayer of the “Our Father,” Jesus makes a very demanding statement: “as we forgive those who trespass against us,” after we have asked the Father for the forgiveness of our offenses (cf. Mt 6:12). In order to forgive an offense to others and to give them hope, it is necessary, in fact, that one’s own life be filled with that same hope that comes from God’s mercy. Hope is superabundant in generosity; it does not calculate, it does not demand accounts from debtors, it is not concerned with its own gain, but has as its focus only one end: to raise up those who are fallen, to bind up wounded hearts, to free from every form of slavery.
11. At the beginning of this Year of Grace, I would therefore like to suggest three actions that can restore dignity to the lives of entire populations and put them back on the path of hope, so that the debt crisis can be overcome and everyone can once again recognize themselves as forgiven debtors.
Above all, I recall the appeal launched by St. John Paul II on the occasion of the Jubilee Year 2000, to consider “a significant reduction, if not a complete cancellation, of the international debt, which weighs down the destiny of many nations”. Recognizing the ecological debt, the richest countries should feel called to do everything possible to cancel the debts of those countries that are not in a position to repay what they owe. Of course, if this is not an isolated act of charity, which risks unleashing a vicious circle of financing and debt once again, it is necessary at the same time to develop a new financial architecture, leading to the creation of a global financial document, based on solidarity and harmony among peoples.
I also ask for a firm commitment to promoting respect for the dignity of human life, from conception to natural death, so that every person may love his or her own life and look to the future with hope, desiring development and happiness for himself or herself and for his or her children. Without hope in life, in fact, it is difficult for the young to develop the desire to generate other lives. Here, in particular, I would like to once again invite a concrete gesture that can promote the culture of life. I am referring to the abolition of the death penalty in all nations. This measure, in fact, besides compromising the inviolability of life, destroys all human hope for forgiveness and renewal.
I would also like to make another appeal, referring to St. Paul VI and Benedict XVI, to the younger generations in this time marked by war: let us use at least a fixed percentage of the money spent on arms to establish a global fund to eliminate hunger once and for all and to facilitate educational activities in the poorest countries aimed at promoting sustainable development and combating climate change. We must seek to eliminate every pretext that might lead young people to imagine their future without hope, or as an expectation of avenging the blood of their loved ones. The future is a gift with which to overcome the errors of the past and to build new paths of peace.
IV. The goal of peace
12. Those who, through the gestures suggested above, undertake the path of hope will be able to see the long-awaited goal of peace ever closer. The psalmist confirms this promise: “when love and truth meet, justice and peace embrace each other” ( Ps 85:11). When I lay aside the weapon of borrowing and restore the path of hope to a sister or brother, I contribute to the restoration of God’s justice on this earth and I set out with that person towards the goal of peace. As St. John XXIII said, true peace can only be born from a heart disarmed of the anguish and fear of war.
13. May 2025 be a year of increasing peace. This real and lasting peace does not stop at the objections of contracts or at the tables of human compromises. Let us seek true peace, which is given by God to a disarmed heart: a heart that does not persist in calculating what is mine and what is yours; a heart that dispels selfishness in the readiness to go out to meet others; a heart that does not hesitate to recognize itself as a debtor to God and is therefore ready to forgive the debts that oppress its neighbor; a heart that overcomes discouragement about the future with the hope that every person is a good for this world.
14. The disarmament of the heart is a gesture that involves everyone, the first and the last, the small and the great, the rich and the poor. Sometimes something simple is enough, such as “a smile, a gesture of friendship, a fraternal look, a sincere listening, a free service”. With these small and great gestures, we will come closer to the goal of peace and will reach it more quickly; indeed, along the way, together with the brothers and sisters gathered together, we will discover ourselves already changed compared to how we had started. In fact, peace is achieved not only with the end of war, but with the beginning of a new world, a world in which we discover ourselves to be different, more united and more brothers and sisters than we had imagined.
15. Grant us your peace, O Lord! This is the prayer I raise to God as I send my best wishes for the New Year to the heads of state and government, to the heads of international organizations, to the leaders of the various religions, to all people of good will.
Forgive our offenses, Lord,
As we forgive those who offend us,
and in this circle of forgiveness grant us your peace,
that peace that only You can give
to whom the heart is left disarmed,
to whom with hope wants to remit the debts of his own brothers,
to whom without fear confesses to be your debtor,
to those who do not remain deaf to the cries of the poorest.