Vatican announces contest to compose music for Holy Year 2025 hymn

Vatican City — The Vatican is looking for an original musical score for the official hymn for the Holy Year 2025 that will highlight its theme, "Pilgrims of Hope."

It must be an original and unpublished score for liturgical purposes and for voice and organ to accompany lyrics already written in Italian, it said. "Participation in the competition is free and open to everyone."

A section of the Dicastery for Evangelization, the Vatican office Francis has tapped to coordinate the jubilee planning, announced Sept. 17 that it was launching an international competition for the composition of the Jubilee hymn.

Participants can find the application to enter the contest at iubilaeum2025.va/en/inno.html and begin uploading their musical scores Jan. 16; the deadline is March 25.

To participate, applicants must follow the competition regulations and specifications, which include composing a score that can be performed by a "schola cantorum" as well as by a church assembly.

The lyrics have already been written by Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri, an Italian theologian, composer and musician.

"The composition must set to music the text of the hymn in the Italian language," the dicastery said. "Once the winning composition is chosen, the dicastery will provide translations into the other major languages."

The hymn "is a song charged with the hope of being freed and supported. It is a song imbued with the hope that it will reach the ears of the one from whom all things flow. It is God who as an ever living flame keeps hope burning and energizes the steps of the people as they journey," the dicastery said.