St. Anthony’s of Steinauer, NE
St. Anthony’s Church of Steinauer has been designated by Lincoln Bishop James Conley as 1 of 8 pilgrimage churches for the Lincoln Diocese during the Jubilee Holy Year of 2025. The Catholic Jubilee Year began Christmas Eve at Vatican City with ceremonies presided over by Pope Francis. In local Catholic diocese the Jubilee Year began Holy Family Sunday, December 29, 2024. The Jubilee concludes on Epiphany, January 6, 2026.
Holy Years have their origin in ancient Israel’s Jubilees that occurred every 50 years, Cf., Leviticus 25. According to The Law of Moses Hebrew Jubilees were likened to a yearlong Sabbath rest with land lying fallow, indentured servants freed, certain debts forgiven, property returned to rightful owners or their heirs, and one and all to going on pilgrimage to their ancestral tribal place of origin. Jewish Levitical priests solemnly commerced the Jubilee years with liturgical ceremonies with the blowing of ram’s horns, or trumpets, on The Day of Atonements/Yom Kippur, Cf., Leviticus 23.
Pope Boniface VIII instituted Holy Years in 1200 A.D. initially these Jubilees occurred every 50 years and included making a pilgrimage to Rome and praying at the Eternal City’s 4 major basilicas: St. Peter’s; St. Mary Major; St. John Lateran; and St. Paul Outside the Walls. In 1470 Pope Paul II decreed that Jubilees would be held every 25 years.
For the 1975 Jubilee Pope Paul VI required pilgrims coming to Rome to visit a church in an impoverished area of the city, as well as the major basilicas. He knew most 20th century pilgrims were affluent and vacationing when coming to Italy and evoked St. Paul in Galatians 2:10 “we should always remember the poor.”
Pope John Paul II called an extraordinary Jubilee Year of Redemption in 1983-84. He allowed local bishops to designate a limited number churches in thier diocese as places of pilgrimage to enable the largest number of Catholics possible to paricipate in Holy Years and that practice has continued in successive Jubilees.
Pope Francis has chosen as the Jubilee Year 2025 the “Pilgrims of Hope/Hope Does Not Disappoint” from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 5:5. As in past Holy Years, for Catholics to receive the Jubilee indulgence they are to a) visit a pilgrimage church saying prayers to renew their faith; b) recieve Holy Communion with 3 days of that visit; and c) recieve Sacramental Confession within 20 days of the same visit.