Twenty-five seconds is very little time to take in a whole year. Below, we revisit the same milestones one by one, in order in which they appear in the video, in a bit more detail:
🚪 Pope Francis opened the holy door in Saint Peter’s Basilica on 24 December 2024, beginning the Jubilee of Hope. Throughout the year, we shared the series of Wednesday audiences on Jesus Christ, our hope, begun by Pope Francis and continued by Pope Leo, a class on hope given by the Prelate of Opus Dei, and personal testimonies of hope, including a video series of young people from around the world who came to Rome for the Jubilee of Youth in August:
🎥 One by One, a page with dozens of new stories from past and present members of Opus Dei, launched in February. If you haven’t seen them yet, we suggest starting with Sofía from Guatemala, Jillian from Singapore, and Francisco from Chile, three of the most recent additions to the page.
✉️ The Prelate of Opus Dei wrote us a long letter on joy in March. Here’s a highlight: “Always and in every circumstance we can and should be happy, because this is what our Lord wants: ‘that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full’ (Jn 15:11).” Speaking of happiness, we sat down with Arthur Brooks and Isabel Rojas for a wide-ranging conversation about happiness and growth, published as a podcast in October.
🔔 We celebrated the 100th anniversary of St. Josemaria’s priestly ordination. In the video: vigil of prayer for priests, one of several commemorative events.
🙏 After Easter, we gave thanks for Pope Francis and joined the whole Church in praying for the next successor of Peter, Pope Leo XIV, who was elected on 8 May. Nearly 3,000 students gathered in Rome from UNIV during Holy Week this year, and they thanked Pope Francis for 12 years of closeness in this video:
📖 The 100th Spanish edition of St. Josemaria’s most well-known book, The Way, came out. Hallow featured the book in their 2025 Lent Challenge, and we discovered or rediscovered it through different events and publications throughout the year.
🌍 BeDoCare was held in Kenya with a special focus on Africa’s future. Read or watch some of the keynotes.
📕 Pope Leo signed his first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te. It is the continuation of a project begun by his predecessor on love for and service to the poor, in whose faces we see “the suffering of the innocent, and therefore the suffering of Christ himself.”
🎙️ We kept walking the path to the centenary, with the conclusion of the Regional Assemblies held in 2024, which were a broad process of listening with nearly 55,000 participants from 70 countries. In the middle of the year, on 11 June, we presented the statutes to the Holy See for their study, after three years of work together. And in October, the president of Opus Dei’s centenary committee told us in an interview, “Opus Dei is what happens in the lives of its members.” In the same interview, she shared some priorities and suggestions from friends and faithful of the Work around the world.
📱 We upgraded our mobile devotional with an ultra-clean design, more pages, and many more languages. Also on our website, 2025 saw the beginning of a new series of editorials on the sanctification of work, an essential aspect of the charism of Opus Dei, monthly additions to the “Combat, Closeness, Mission” series on the path to holiness, and new instalments in the series on norms of piety. And our statistics say that the novena for work was especially popular this year.
🚦 The Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints gave a green light for investigating the possible sainthood of a supernumerary in the USA, Ruth Pakaluk. Read the news about her cause (Vatican Says Cause for Ruth Pakaluk Can Move Forward) or find her prayer card here.
✈️ Pope Leo visited Türkiye and Lebanon with messages of hope and peace. Here are some first-person stories from the trip: