“Christmas comes to light a candle in that darkness that disorients us, that makes us fall into anguish, that makes us see enemies everywhere.” Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, takes stock of the 2025 Jubilee, reflecting on the challenges of the new year: wars, falling birth rates, and prisons. On Leo XIV’s first Christmas, the Church in Italy is called to be “leaven for a reconciled world, welcoming those thirsting for meaning and for a future, the spiritually homeless”.
Your Eminence, this is the first Christmas of Leo XIV, who in recent months has pointed the Church towards sobriety, dialogue, peace, and care for the poor. What expectations does this open up for the Church in Italy?
Pope Leo is showing us how to be Christians today. Not in our statements or appearances, but in our lives and choices. The Church in Italy is reaping the fruits of the Synodal Path: the awareness of walking together, that is, proclaiming Christ, and of doing so together, as a community, a home that welcomes and loves everyone, beginning with the poorest and the most wounded. Together with the Pope, we want to be leaven for a reconciled world, welcoming those thirsting for meaning and for a future, the spiritually homeless, without fear of making courageous and demanding decisions.
In a few days, the last Holy Door will close. What is your assessment of the 2025 Jubilee?
It has certainly been a year of grace, conversion, renewal of faith, and encounter with Christ. It has also been a year of many confirmations and surprises, which help us to believe in the power of the Word of God “sine glossa”, as Saint Francis desired. Some may feel uneasy, but it is the Gospel that never ceases to attract people.
What spiritual and pastoral fruits do you hope will remain in communities even after the official conclusion of the Holy Year?
Romano Guardini used to say: “A process of incalculable importance has begun: the Church is reawakened in souls.” I am convinced that this reawakening exists, even if it is small, silent, perhaps hidden, like a tiny seed trying to make its way among pebbles and weeds. And we, as Church, must help this seed to blossom and bear fruit. With patience, with trust and with hope. Evil, violence, fear and individualism arise from a yearning for beauty, for light, for gratuitous love.
Ukraine, the Middle East, Syria, Africa: conflicts continue and diplomacy remains fragile. What contribution can the Church in Italy make to peace efforts today?
We begin to build peace in our hearts, by freeing them from selfishness, from the individualism that prevents us from seeing the other as a brother or sister, from the temptation to think that we can save ourselves alone, from that subtle violence that poisons relationships. By disarming the “I” of what ruins it: selfishness, which turns it into an idol. Only with the “You” of God and the “We” of the Church do we truly find the “I”. We can build bridges where walls are raised and foster dialogue where people talk over one another or without heart.
How can this commitment be translated concretely?
At several levels: personal, communal, institutional, national, and supranational. Pope Leo has asked that every community become a home of peace and non-violence. This is the commitment the Church in Italy has taken on in this time dominated by force, from the painful display of oneself to the tragic force of weapons. Security is important, but it must always be proportionate and aimed at initiating dialogue with everyone.
How can we preserve a horizon of hope when the logic of weapons still prevails?
Do we truly believe that we are all brothers and sisters, or do we turn it into an empty statement? Let us say no to the globalisation of helplessness, and let us not remain indifferent to the suffering and cry of so many. It is a challenge, a responsibility, that calls each of us into question now, one that cannot be delegated.
Italy is experiencing a new historic low in births. What concrete steps do you envisage to support birth rates and accompany families in 2026?
We must return to looking at life with enthusiasm, and free ourselves from fear of life or from the temptation to want all guarantees and answers first. We will find the answers by living, and we can do so because we have found the answer: Jesus. Let us free ourselves from haste, from the constant pursuit of profit at the expense of relationships. Let us learn to love as Jesus teaches us. Only Jesus proclaims that we are all brothers and sisters.
Are concrete social and economic responses also needed?
So many challenges confront us: the relationship between women, motherhood and work, economic precariousness… For this reason, concrete decisions are needed, born of constructive dialogue between the Third Sector and institutions: housing, combating job insecurity, providing support. But a vision is also required, one that addresses a problem — falling birth rates — whose roots are social, cultural and anthropological.
What renewal do you ask of the Christian community in order to be more generative?
The Church has a great responsibility because she is called to restore motivations that free people from fear and push them to look beyond, that give them a glimpse of the beauty of transmitting life, that show them that life has meaning when it is given to someone else.
The Jubilee of prisoners has refocused attention on overcrowding, harsh conditions and reintegration. What changes do you think are urgently needed today to restore dignity to life in prison?
There is too much suffering in prisons. To restore dignity, we must invest greatly, in terms of money, time, and humanity. This commitment must become a structured project with continuous accompaniment and adequate funding, so that rehabilitation — which is what we are constitutionally called to pursue — can be possible and real.
Data on reoffending are worrying…
Two thirds of those released from prison reoffend, but this is not the case for those admitted to alternative measures. Wonderful experiences, widespread across the country, show that the goal of “zero reoffending” is possible. We must work on this front together: institutions, civil society, the ecclesial community, with the support of the world of volunteering.
What contribution can the Church in Italy offer to support those about to return to society?
It is necessary to ensure the presence of volunteers in prisons, promoting initiatives that bring prisons closer to the territory and to the outside world, so that they do not remain two separate spheres. As the Church in Italy, we continue to walk with our brothers and sisters who have made mistakes, with love, because this helps us to recognise in the other the person who is always worthy of our compassion.
Are there concrete hopes for prisoners in this Jubilee Year?
As we prepare to celebrate Christmas and to conclude this Holy Year, we hope that there may be measures — requested by Pope Francis and urged by Pope Leo at the Jubilee of Prisoners — that restore hope to inmates, so that no one is lost.
On this 25 December marked by crises and uncertainty, what word of hope do you wish to offer to Italians?
We are grappling with many fragilities and with the force of evil that breaks into the world and often into our lives. But Christmas comes precisely for this reason: not because everything is going well, but to light a candle in that darkness that disorients us, that makes us fall into anguish and depression, that makes us see enemies everywhere, that crushes us.
How can the birth of Jesus continue to speak to the hearts of people and families today?
In a world in which war spills over and spreads, even this year, Jesus is born, becomes flesh and comes to dwell among us, as a defenceless child in need of care. Let us build communities, let us defend the family by being the family of God, by beginning to be His family. Let us not turn away; let us truly welcome Him, making peace with ourselves, with others, in history and on the Earth. This is my wish; this is my hope.
