The official mascot for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year is “Luce,” which means “light” in Italian.

The mascot, Luce — “light” in Italian — is intended to engage a younger audience and guide visitors through the holy year. Luce is wearing a yellow raincoat, mud-stained boots, and a pilgrim’s cross; Luce’s mission is to guide young pilgrims toward hope and faith with her trusty dog, Santino, at her side. Shells glimmer in her eyes, recalling the scallop shell of the Camino de Santiago, an emblem of the pilgrimage journey. Luce’s shining eyes are “a symbol of the hope of the heart.”

Luce’s yellow sailor’s raincoat nods to the Vatican flag and the journey through life’s storms. The mascot’s muddy boots represent a long and challenging journey, while her staff symbolises the pilgrimage toward eternity.

The mascot debuted this week at Lucca Comics and Games, Italy’s celebrated convention for comics, video games, and fantasy. The Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization hosted a space dedicated to “Luce and Friends.” It is the first time a Vatican dicastery has participated in a comics convention.

Luce will also be the face of the Holy See’s pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, where she will represent the Vatican’s pavilion theme, “Beauty Brings Hope,” alongside Caravaggio’s “The Entombment of Christ,” a painting that will be temporarily on loan from the Vatican Museums for the expo.

Simone Legno, the Italian co-founder of the pop culture brand Tokidoki, designed Luce and her “pilgrim friends” — Fe, Xin, and Sky, each outfitted in brightly coloured jackets. Legno, who admitted a lifelong love for Japanese pop culture, said he hopes that “Luce can represent the sentiments that resonate in the hearts of the younger generations.” “I am extremely grateful to the Dicastery for Evangelization for opening its doors to pop culture as well,” he said.

Special holy year

A jubilee is a holy year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. It typically occurs once every 25 years, though the pope can call for extraordinary jubilee years more often, such as the 2016 Year of Mercy or the 2013 Year of Faith.

Jubilee, or Holy Year, is a year in which sins are forgiven and, at the same time, punished for sin. Among Catholics, this tradition dates back to Pope VIII. It dates back to 1300 when Bonifacius declared it a holy year. Following this, ordinary jubilees were generally celebrated every 25 or 50 years, with extraordinary jubilees added as needed. Catholic jubilees, especially in the Latin Church, usually involve a pilgrimage to a sacred site, typically the city of Rome.

The Vatican has planned a range of cultural events to accompany the lead-up to the jubilee year, including a concert on Nov. 3 of Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5” and an art exhibit of Marc Chagall’s “White Crucifixion” painting, which will be on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago to be displayed in Rome’s Museo del Corso from Nov. 27 to Jan. 27. 

The jubilee year itself will begin with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve 2024, welcoming an anticipated 30 million pilgrims into Rome by the time the Holy Year ends on Jan. 6, 2026.