Pope Leo XIV closes 2025 Holy Year with critique of consumerism and xenophobia

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday closed out the Vatican’s 2025 Holy Year by denouncing today's consumerist and anti-foreigner sentiment, capping a Jubilee that saw some 33 million pilgrims flock to Rome and a historic transition from one American pontiff to another.

With cardinals and diplomats looking on, Leo kneeled down in prayer on the stone floor at the threshold of the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica. He then stood up and pulled the two doors shut, symbolically concluding the rarest of Jubilees: one that was opened by a feeble Pope Francis in December 2024, continued during his funeral and the conclave, and then was closed by Francis' successor a year later.

Only once before, in 1700, has a Holy Year been opened by one pope and closed by another.

Tuesday's ceremony, at the start of Mass celebrating the feast of Epiphany, capped a dizzying year of special audiences, Masses and meetings that dominated Leo’s first months as pontiff and in many ways put his own agenda on hold.

As if to signal his pontificate now can begin in earnest, Leo has summoned the world’s cardinals to the Vatican for two days of meetings starting Wednesday to discuss governing the 1.4-billion strong Catholic Church. On the agenda is the issue of the liturgy, suggesting Leo is diving head-first into the divisions within the church over the celebration of the old Latin Mass.

In his homily Tuesday, Leo said the Jubilee year had invited all Christians to reflect on the Biblical teachings to welcome the stranger and resist “the flattery and seduction of those in power.”

“Around us, a distorted economy tries to profit from everything,” he said. “Let us ask ourselves: has the Jubilee taught us to flee from this type of efficiency that reduces everything to a product and human beings to consumers? After this year, will we be better able to recognize a pilgrim in the visitor, a seeker in the stranger, a neighbor in the foreigner, and fellow travelers in those who are different?”

He echoed the theme in a special Epiphany prayer delivered from the basilica loggia to a rain-soaked piazza below. As thousands of people huddled under colorful umbrellas and ponchos, Leo recalled that traditionally Jubilees have included appeals for peace and “a redistribution of the land and its resources” to those in need.

“In the place of inequality, may there be fairness, and may the industry of war be replaced by the craft of peace,” he said.

For the Vatican, a Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition of the faithful making pilgrimages to Rome every 25 years to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and receive indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins if they pass through the Holy Door.

For Rome, it’s a chance to take advantage of public funds, in this case some 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion), to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of neglect and bring it up to modern, European standards.

The Vatican on Monday claimed 33,475,369 pilgrims had participated in the Jubilee, though organizer Archbishop Rino Fisichella acknowledged the number was only a rough estimate and could include double counting. At a press conference, neither he nor Italian officials provided a breakdown between Holy Year pilgrims and Rome’s overall tourist figures for the same period.

Rome’s relationship with Jubilees dates to 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated the first Holy Year in what historians say marked the definitive designation of Rome as the center of Christianity. Even then, the number of pilgrims was so significant that Dante referred to them in his “Inferno.”

Massive public works projects have long accompanied Holy Years, including the creation of the Sistine Chapel (commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV for the Jubilee of 1475) and the big Vatican garage (for the 2000 Jubilee under St. John Paul II).

Some works have been controversial, such as the construction of Via della Conciliazione, the broad boulevard leading to St. Peter’s Square. An entire neighborhood was razed to make it for the 1950 Jubilee.

The main public works project for the 2025 Jubilee was an extension of that boulevard: A pedestrian piazza along the Tiber linking Via della Conciliazione to the nearby Castel St. Angelo, with the major road that had separated them diverted to an underground tunnel.

Leo has already announced that the next Jubilee will be in 2033, to commemorate what Christians believe was the A.D. 33 death and resurrection of Christ.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Leo XIV closes St. Peter's Basilica Holy Door to end the 2025 ordinary Jubilee year, at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2025. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP)

Pope Leo XIV closes St. Peter's Basilica Holy Door to end the 2025 ordinary Jubilee year, at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP)

Pope Leo XIV closes St. Peter's Basilica Holy Door to end the 2025 ordinary Jubilee year, at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2025. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP)

FILE - Pope Francis opens the Holy Door of St Peter's Basilica to mark the start of the Catholic Jubilee Year, at the Vatican, Dec. 24, 2024. (Alberto Pizzoli/Pool Photo via AP, file)

Members of the clergy arrive ahead of Pope Leo XIV for the closing of the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica to end the 2025 ordinary Jubilee year, at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP)

Members of the clergy arrive ahead of Pope Leo XIV for the closing of the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica to end the 2025 ordinary Jubilee year, at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP)

Pope Leo XIV closes St. Peter's Basilica Holy Door to end the 2025 ordinary Jubilee year, at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP)

Pope Leo XIV closes St. Peter's Basilica Holy Door to end the 2025 ordinary Jubilee year, at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (Yara Nardi/Pool photo via AP)

TENERIFE, Spain (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization sought Saturday to reassure residents of the Spanish island where passengers of a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship are expected to be evacuated, issuing them a direct message that the virus was “not another COVID.”

The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, with more than 140 passengers and crew on board, is headed to Spain's Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, and is expected to arrive at the island of Tenerife early Sunday.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, along with Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, were due on the island Saturday to coordinate the disembarkation of passengers and some crew.

“I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest. The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment,” Tedros said in a message to the people of Tenerife.

“But I need you to hear me clearly: This is not another COVID. The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now,” Tedros added.

The WHO, Spanish authorities and cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions said nobody on the Hondius is currently showing symptoms of the virus.

Hantavirus can cause life-threatening illness. It usually spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.

Three people have died since the outbreak, and five passengers who left the ship are infected with hantavirus.

Some on Tenerife say they are worried. On board the cruise ship, some Spanish passengers have voiced concern about being stigmatized.

“I tell you, I don’t like this very much,” said 69-year-old resident Simon Vidal. “Anyone can say what they want. Why did they have to bring a boat from another country here? Why not anywhere else, why bring it to the Canary Islands?”

Others said they empathized with the boat's passengers, but were still concerned.

“The truth is that it is very worrying,” said 27-year-old Venezuelan immigrant Samantha Aguero. She added: “We feel a bit unsafe, we don’t feel as there are 100% security measures in place to welcome it. This is a virus after all and we have lived this during the pandemic. But we also need to have empathy.”

Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said passengers and some crew would disembark in Tenerife “under maximum safety conditions.”

The ship will not dock but will remain at anchor. Everyone disembarking will be checked for symptoms and won't be taken off the ship until a flight is already in Tenerife waiting to fly them off the island, Garcia said during a news conference in Madrid. There are currently people of more than 20 different nationalities on board.

Both the U.S. and the U.K. have agreed to send planes to evacuate their citizens. Americans are to be quarantined at a medical center in Nebraska.

All Spanish passengers will be transferred to a medical facility and quarantined, Garcia said. Oceanwide has listed 13 Spanish passengers and one Spanish crew member on board.

Those disembarking will leave behind their luggage, Garcia said, and will be allowed to take only a small bag with essential items, a cellphone, charger and documentation.

Some crew, as well as the body of a passenger who died on board, will remain on the ship, which will sail on to the Netherlands, where it will undergo disinfection, the minister added.

According to a letter sent by the Dutch foreign and health ministers to parliament late Friday, Spain has activated the EU civil protection mechanism for a medical evacuation plane equipped for infections diseases to be on standby in case anyone on the ship becomes ill. That person would then be transported by air to the European mainland.

The Dutch government will work with Spanish authorities and the ship company to arrange repatriation of Dutch passengers and crew as soon as possible after arrival in Tenerife, subject to medical conditions and advice from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the letter said. Those without symptoms will go into home quarantine for six weeks and be monitored by local health services.

As the ship is Dutch-flagged, the Netherlands may also temporarily accommodate people of other nationalities and monitor them in quarantine, it said.

Health authorities across four continents were tracking down and monitoring more than two dozen passengers who disembarked before the deadly outbreak was detected. They were also scrambling to trace others who may have come into contact with them.

On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, Dutch officials and the ship’s operator have said.

It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a passenger.

Dutch public health authorities have been monitoring people who were on a flight that was briefly boarded by a Dutch ship passenger who later died and was confirmed to have hantavirus. Three people who were on the flight and had symptoms have all tested negative for hantavirus, Dutch National Institute for Public Health spokesperson Harald Wychgel told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Becatoros reported from Sparta, Greece. Associated Press reporters Angela Charlton in Paris and Helena Alves in Tenerife contributed to this report.

A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Media crew members stand in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Passengers on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, scan the horizon with binoculars during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

A passenger checks his camera inside his cabin on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

A passenger on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, takes a photo of the ship's weighing anchor in Praia, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)