On January 16, 2026, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti sealed the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, closing the 2025 Jubilee of Hope until 2050. Before skilled workers completed the brick wall, a bronze capsa was embedded inside containing the door’s key, official parchments documenting the Jubilee, commemorative medals from Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV, and both pontiffs’ coats of arms. The capsa was enclosed in soldered lead casing before entombment. The ceremony traced centuries of ritual and promise, and the structure holds further details of this solemn tradition.
The ancient bronze Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica was sealed on the evening of Friday, January 16, 2026, marking the formal conclusion of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope.
The Holy Door closed January 16, 2026, ending the Jubilee of Hope and beginning a 25-year wait until its next opening.
The ceremony began at 19:30, ten days after Pope Leo XIV had concluded the Holy Year, following a private centuries-old ritual that will keep the door closed until 2050 or possibly 2033 for a special commemoration.
Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, presided over the rite alongside Archbishop Diego Giovanni Ravelli, Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, and Monsignor Massimiliano Matteo Boiardi, who served as Pontifical Master of Ceremonies.
The ceremony opened with a prayer for the tens of millions of pilgrims who had crossed the threshold since Pope Francis opened the door on Christmas Eve 2024, entrusting them to the Lord and invoking perseverance in their faith.
Cardinal Gambetti and Archbishop Ravelli laid the first two bricks symbolically before the Sanpietrini, skilled workers from the Fabric of Saint Peter, constructed the inner wall using approximately 3,200 bricks.
Before the wall was completed, a bronze capsa was placed inside the sealing structure.
The container held an official parchment documenting the Jubilee’s opening and closing, the coats of arms of Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV, commemorative medals, and the key to the Holy Door itself.
Among the commemorative medals were one from the final year of Pope Francis’s pontificate and others marking the ten years between 2016 and 2025.
Monsignor Orazio Pepe, secretary of the Fabric of Saint Peter, described how the bronze capsa was enclosed in a lead casing, which was then soldered and sealed.
Vatican workers embedded the container within the brick wall, entombing it until the next Jubilee.
The rite concluded with the Lord’s Prayer and a final blessing as the last brick was set in place.
The sealing represents both an ending and a promise.
The sealing at St. Peter’s was the last in a series of ceremonies, following similar rites at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, and the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.
The Holy Door, associated with spiritual renewal and the remission of sins, will remain physically unusable for the next quarter century, a silent witness to the pilgrims who passed through and a patient threshold awaiting future generations of the faithful.
The rite also echoed themes of covenant and promise rooted in Israel’s origins as recounted in Scripture.
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