On April 11, Pope Francis issued the Bull of Indiction (Misericordiae Vultus) of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.

The signs that characterise every Holy Year are the Holy Doors, indulgencesand pilgrimages.

The opening and closing of each Holy Door represent the beginning and end of the Holy Year. The door leads to the way that every Christian is called to follow from sin to grace, listening to Christ who said: “I am the door” (Jn 10,9) and “I am the way”(Jn 14,6).

In the Bull Pope Bergoglio announced that the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica will be opened on December 8, the 50th anniversary of the end of Vatican Council II.

On the Third Sunday of Advent, December 13, that of St John Lateran and those in every diocese will be opened. In the following weeks, it will be the turn of those of St Mary Major and St Paul Outside the Walls.

The Extraordinary Holy Year will end on the Feast of Christ the King in 2016. Pope Francis wrote that whoever passes through these doors “would experience the love of God who consoles, forgives and instils hope”.

Till 1975 the Doors in Rome were bricked in on both sides.

Blessed Pope Paul VI wanted to shift the attention from the wall to the door and established that the Doors would not continue to be bricked in any more.

The internal walls remain and they bear the name of the pope who opens and closes the Holy Year and contain a parchment and some coins in an urn.

The coins found today at the Holy Doors in Rome are those of Pope Saint John Paul II, placed on the occasion of the Jubilee of 2000.