Mary’s Meals and the Catholic Jubilee 2025

“Hope is a word that has informed and inspired the work of Mary’s Meals since the beginning,” says Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, founder of Mary’s Meals.

Ahead of the upcoming Year of Jubilee 2025, the global school feeding charity named in honour of Our Lady is reaffirming its mission as one rooted in hope.

The late Holy Father, Pope Francis, officially opened the Holy Year with the rite of the Opening of the Holy Door of the Papal Basilica of St. Peter on 24 December 2024. He then presided over the celebration of Mass on the night of the Lord’s Birth inside the Basilica, and on the following Sunday, 29 December, opened the Holy Door at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome.

Mary’s Meals’ mission is one of hope in communities where hunger and poverty prevent children from gaining an education. The charity’s founder and CEO, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, says: “In the 1990s, we painted ‘Delivering Hope’ on the side of our truck carrying aid donations to people in Bosnia during the war there. Twenty years later, we began calling the young adults whose lives had been changed by receiving Mary’s Meals at school ‘Generation Hope’. And in our various daily tasks which enable this mission we like to describe ourselves as ‘Servants of Hope’.”

As Pope Francis called on the Church during the Jubilee to be: “…tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind,” Mary’s Meals continues to be a beacon of hope for children around the world, particularly in areas where conflict, the climate crisis, and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic have left many children experiencing extreme poverty.

In the spirit of the Jubilee’s theme ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, Mary’s Meals invites all supporters to come together this Holy Year to help to bring hope into situations of hardship. Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, who will make his own pilgrimage to Rome during the Jubilee year, says: “It is a great joy to be invited to participate in this year of Jubilee as Pilgrims of Hope! We pray that by accepting the invitation we might be given new strength in our daily work for the world’s poorest children – and that in learning to do this work with more love we become better at proclaiming hope to a world that is crying out for it.”

As Pope Francis wrote in the Bull of Induction, hope is for every one of us: “I ask with all my heart that hope be granted to the billions of the poor, who often lack the essentials of life. Before the constant tide of new forms of impoverishment, we can easily grow inured and resigned. Yet we must not close our eyes to the dramatic situations that we now encounter all around us, not only in certain parts of the world.

It is scandalous that in a world possessed of immense resources, the poor continue to be the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people. These days they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile”.

Pilgrims of Hope

‘Pilgrims of hope’ will be able to obtain the Indulgence by undertaking a pilgrimage to any Holy Door in Rome or elsewhere in the world. But the faithful, following the example and mandate of Christ, are encouraged as well to carry out works of charity or mercy more frequently, especially corporal works of mercy such as feeding the hungry. The Jubilee Plenary Indulgence can also be obtained through initiatives that put into practice the spirit of penance. This can include reaffirming the penitential nature of Fridays by fasting or stepping away from unnecessary distractions, as well as by donating generously to the poor.

The Jubilee will conclude with the closing of the Holy Door in the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican on 6 January 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord. The Holy Year will conclude in the particular churches on Sunday, 28 December 2025.

For those who want to live this Jubilee opportunity through Mary’s Meals’ little acts of love, or find out more about local pilgrimages, please visit www.marysmeals.org.au