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Cordoba, Spain, Sep 17, 2022 / 07:00 am (CNA).
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The logo of the 2025 Jubilee. The Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization is organizing the Catholic Church’s next Holy Year around the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.” / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Sep 17, 2022 / 05:12 am (CNA).
The Vatican will hold a contest to choose the original musical composition for the official hymn of the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year.
The Dicastery for Evangelization announced the sacred music writing competition Sept. 17. The contest will open for submissions early next year.
Entries, the dicastery said, should set to music a text in Italian by the theologian Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri. After the winning music is chosen next year, the evangelization office will translate the text into other major languages.
The text is titled “Pilgrims of Hope,” after the theme of the 2025 Jubilee. The refrain, translated into English by CNA, is: “Living flame of my hope, May this song reach up to Thee! Eternal womb of infinite life, On my way I trust in Thee.”
According to the regulations set out by the Vatican, the musical composition should include a score for voice and organ, and be able to be sung both by church congregations and by four-part church choirs.
The competition will be open for submissions from Jan. 16 to March 25, 2023, and the winner will be chosen by a judging committee in collaboration with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. Full regulations can be found on the webpage of the 2025 Jubilee.
The logo for the 2025 Jubilee Year was also chosen after a worldwide competition, and unveiled in June.
A Jubilee is a special Holy Year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. An ordinary Jubilee typically takes place every 25 years, though a pope may call for additional Jubilees, as Pope Francis did with the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy from 2015-2016.
The last ordinary Jubilee was the Great Jubilee of 2000, which was held under Saint Pope John Paul II and had the theme “Christ Yesterday, Today, Forever.”
In its announcement of the hymn-writing competition Saturday, the Dicastery for Evangelization said that “the Sacred Scriptures are steeped in song, and the Psalms are a striking example: the prayers of the people of Israel were written to be sung, and it was in song that the most human events were presented before the Lord.”
“The tradition of the Church has continued this, making music and song one of the lungs of its liturgy,” the dicastery said.
The evangelization office, which is responsible for organizing the Jubilee, said “many themes of the Holy Year are woven into the text” of the hymn prepared by Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri, who is the former dean of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family in Rome.
“The motto, ‘Pilgrims of Hope,’” it said, “is best echoed biblically in some pages from the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9 and Isaiah 60). The themes of creation, fraternity, God’s tenderness and hope in our destination resonate in a language, which although not ‘technically’ theological, is in substance and in the allusions, so that it rings eloquently in the ears of our time.”
The full lyrics of what will become the official hymn of the 2025 Jubilee can be found below. It has been translated into English from the Italian original by CNA.
Pilgrims of Hope
Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.
Every tongue, people and nation
finds light in your Word.
Sons and daughters scattered and fragile
are embraced in your beloved Son.
Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.
God watches us, tender and patient:
the dawn of a new future rises.
New Heavens Earth made new:
the Spirit of Life moves walls.
Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.
Lift up your eyes, move with the wind,
speed up your step: God comes, in time.
See the Son who became Man:
thousands upon thousands find the way.
Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.
Archbishop Paul Gallagher in 2018. / Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äußeres via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0).
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Denver Newsroom, Sep 16, 2022 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
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President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping during the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China. / Gil Corzo/Shutterstock
Denver Newsroom, Sep 16, 2022 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis expressed his “availability” to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping while both men were in Kazakhstan this week, but China declined, according to a Reuters report citing an unnamed Vatican official.
Pope Francis was in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital formerly known as Astana, Sept. 13–15 for an interreligious meeting, while Xi was in the same city to meet with Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, one day after the pope did.
According to Reuters, the source said the Vatican made “an expression of availability,” and the Chinese side said they “appreciated the gesture” but that there was no free time in Xi’s schedule.
A meeting of the two leaders would have been momentous; there has never been a meeting between a pope and a president of China. Pope Francis has said he is willing to visit China, saying on the flight from Rome to Kazakhstan on Sept. 13: “I’m always ready to go to China.”
The coinciding visits of Francis and Xi also comes as the Holy See and China determine the renewal of a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops in China and a cardinal is preparing to stand trial in Hong Kong for his role in a pro-democracy legal fund.
Xi has been harshly criticized for overseeing the persecution of religious believers of many stripes in China, including Christians and the Uyghur Muslims of the Xinjiang region.
Kazakhstan and China, which are neighbors, have close ties, with large-scale Chinese investments in the Central Asian country’s natural resources through its Belt and Road Initiative. Xi announced his plan for a “new silk road” in the Kazakh capital in 2013. The Chinese leader met with Vladimir Putin in Uzbekistan on Thursday as part of Xi’s first trip outside China since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pope Francis has said little about China’s human rights violations since the Vatican first entered into a provisional agreement with China in 2018. That deal was meant to unify the country’s 12 million Catholics, divided between the underground Church and the Communist-administered Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and clear a path for the appointment of bishops for Chinese dioceses. Despite the deal, persecution of the underground Church has continued and, according to some, intensified. That deal is expected to be renewed for another two years at the end of the month.
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Pope Francis speaking at the Seventh Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Nur-Sultan (Astana), Kazakhstan, Sept. 13–15, 2022. / Vatican Media
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