The 2025 Jubilee bears the title and motto: “Pilgrims of Hope.” This raised many questions for me; above all, I wondered whether, in today’s world, marked by environmental crises, wars, growing inequalities and a lack of trust in institutions, hoping is not simply a naïve gesture, if not even a useless one. And yet, we are called to be pilgrims of hope, that is, to hope against all hope: not to delude ourselves, but to remain faithful to a horizon of justice still invisible, which calls each one of us to radical responsibility.
In times like these, hoping is not a luxury. It is a conscious choice. We cannot know whether the world will change, nor how. But we can act as if the impossible were possible: to live as if the future depended on us, even when everything tells us otherwise.
Hoping for the impossible is not an illusion, but the first act of a justice that does not yet exist.
And precisely because it does not exist yet, we need it more than ever.

Truly hoping for the impossible, to go beyond despair and mistrust
We live in strange times. Every day the world serves us its menu of anxieties: wars, climate crisis, artificial intelligences out of control, globalised loneliness. And now, in addition to everything else, we must also reckon with the crisis between Israel and Iran. If someone dares to say, “let’s hope for the best,” the reaction comes at once: “but what is there to hope for?”
And yet, we are invited to be pilgrims of hope. It may sound like a slogan, but in fact it is a challenge: to believe in the impossible, precisely when everything screams that it is over.

The impossible as the only possibility
We can no longer deceive ourselves. We can no longer talk about “political correctness,” about positive thinking or about motivational quotes printed on coffee mugs. True hope is the one that has no certainties, that is born in darkness. It is like believing in rain in the middle of the desert, or in peace at the heart of war.
But beware: the impossible is not only what some consider “unachievable.” It is what breaks the automatism of the world as it is. It is the unexpected gesture, the word that changes everything, the future we had not even dared to imagine.

A politics attentive to people
We must speak and practise a political and social thought and action capable of moving beyond divisions, without “us against them.” Only a radical attention to people’s living conditions, whoever they may be.
It is about living in a permanent state of expectation that the rules of the game might change. Not because we need heroes, but because we need justice. And this justice may come from our daily commitment, in ways we cannot even imagine.

Hope is not naïveté, it is courage
Hoping today may seem like an act of naïveté, when in fact it is exactly the opposite: it is a subversive act, a refusal to resign ourselves. I do not know whether we will save the climate, democracy, humanity. But we must live as if what seems impossible were possible.
In the end, is this not what so many young people do when they take to the streets for climate, peace, work? When they welcome migrants while the sea and governments reject and deport them? When they fight for rights that seem like luxuries of the past? They are the fools of the present, the healthy carriers who make the impossible possible.

Hope is a verb in the present tense
At a time when everything is cynical, when the word “hope” sounds out of place like a song from the 1980s played in the wrong context, perhaps we should learn to use it again. Not to delude ourselves, but to remain human, not to abandon the future, not to lose our moral compass.
“To be pilgrims of hope” does not mean dreaming with eyes closed, but living with eyes wide open, even when the night seems endless.
And hoping is not a weakness. It is a choice. A responsibility. A political act.

See, Sperare oggi. Una responsabilità condivisa