Raphoe Diocese marks end of Jubilee Year of Hope at St Eunan's Cathedral

A special ceremony took place at St Eunan’s Cathedral in Letterkenny to formally mark the closing of the Jubilee Year.

The Catholic Church celebrates a Jubilee Year every 25 years and 2025 was the ‘Year of Hope’.

In the Raphoe Diocese, a ceremonial door opening was held at the Cathedral in late December, 2024. 

In 2015, Pope Francis expanded the tradition of the opening of a ‘Holy Door’ to include each Diocese across the world. This meant that Catholics could “gain the plenary indulgences granted during the Jubilee year without having to travel to Rome”.

On Wednesday evening, on the Feast of the Epiphany, Diocesan Administrator Monsignor Kevin Gillespie led the congregation in a candlelight procession to the main door of the Cathedral for the closing.

Parishioners at the candlelit ceremony 

Parishioners from across the Diocese gathered in numbers for Mass, which preceded the closing ceremony.

Representatives from parishes were invited into the Sanctuary, where candles were lit from the Paschal Candle and prayers were said for the incoming Bishop of Raphoe, Niall Coll, who will be officially installed on January 25.

The St Johnston native was appointed by Pope Leo XIV to lead the See of Raphoe, vacant since the transfer of Bishop Alan McGuckian SJ to the Diocese of Down and Connor in 2024.

At a recent Mass in his hometown of St Johnston, Bishop Coll touched on the theme of ‘hope’ that was the central theme of the Jubilee Year.

Read next: Bishop Niall Coll to be installed as Bishop of Raphoe in January

He said: “Christian hope is not about running away. Not about wishing we were somewhere else, or that life was easier. Or that this present moment would just pass. Hope is about living fully where we are.

“Trusting that this moment, not self-imagined future, is where God is at work. There is only one place where life happens. Now. The past is over. The future has not yet arrived. Hope is not meaning for life to begin later. Hope cares to live attentively in the present moment.”