(ZENIT News / Rome, 11. 20. 2025) – The Jubilee of Choirs and Choral Groups will be celebrated in Rome on Saturday, November 22, and Sunday, November 23, 2025. Approximately 35,000 pilgrims from 117 countries have registered for this Jubilee, dedicated especially to professional, diocesan, parish, and amateur choirs.
The event will begin on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. with the Jubilee Audience of Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s Square. Following the Audience, pilgrims will have the opportunity to pass through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. In the afternoon, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., pilgrimages to the Holy Doors of St. Peter’s, St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and St. Mary Major are scheduled, with the possibility of receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the participating churches. From 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., more than 100 choirs registered for the Jubilee will sing at the Evening Masses in over 90 churches in Rome. For a complete list of Roman parishes where choirs from around the world will be performing, please visit the official Jubilee website.
On Sunday, November 23, at 10:30 a.m., pilgrims will attend Holy Mass presided over by Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s Square. In the afternoon, the Dicastery for Evangelization has organized a concert, in keeping with the Jubilee concerts «Harmonies of Hope,» entitled «One Voice Through the Centuries.»
This initiative, which is part of the «Jubilee is Culture» cultural program, consists of a liturgical-musical journey that presents, as an artistic pilgrimage, the richness and diversity of choral forms born from the Western classical tradition. The program is based on the idea that choral singing is not simply an aesthetic expression, but a language capable of expressing, with different styles and timbres, the faith of the Church throughout the centuries. Starting at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, four churches in the historic center of Rome will host concerts, each dedicated to a different era of liturgical choral singing.
The program begins at 4:00 p.m. in Santa Maria in Campo Marzio with the choir of the Accademia Lirica Beniamino Gigli, which will perform works by Palestrina, Croce, De Victoria, De Prez, and Duruflé. At 5:00 p.m., the same choir will perform in Sant’Agnese in Agone, adding works by Praetorius, Tartini, and Bruckner. Following this, at 6:00 p.m., the choir of the Institute Giovanni Battista Lulli will perform works by Delalande and Brossard in San Luigi des Francesi, before moving to San Salvatore in Lauro, where at 7:00 p.m. they will perform works by Charpentier and Dumont.
The journey will therefore be both physical and spiritual: from the contrapuntal purity of the Renaissance to the solemnity of the Baroque, passing through the most intimate and contemplative atmospheres of the modern era, demonstrating how singing, throughout time, has acquired different technical and linguistic characteristics without ceasing to be the voice of spirituality.
