July 2025

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,

As we stand on the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 2025 — the great pillars of the Church, the Rock and the Apostle to the Gentiles — the blood of the martyrs still speaks, and the Church feels the urgent pulse of mission beating in her veins as we prepare to enter July. This July will be a month soaked in the Precious Blood of Jesus — traditionally dedicated to that Blood which alone ransoms the world — and it will throb with the apostolic fire of the Jubilee Year. Thousands of missionaries, volunteers, and lay apostles will converge on Rome for the Jubilee of Missionaries and the Apostolate (July 5–6), while the Jubilee of the Elderly and Grandparents (July 26–27, tied to the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne) will remind the whole Church that the wisdom of age is indispensable for authentic evangelization. Under the courageous, Christ-centered leadership of Pope Leo XIV, who continues to preach that there is no hope apart from Jesus Christ and Him crucified, July will be the month when the Church is sent forth anew — wounded, bleeding, but invincible because covered by the Blood of the Lamb.

The liturgical calendar of July 2025 is a relentless call to mission and to the Precious Blood that makes mission possible:

Holy Days of Obligation in July 2025

There are no universal Holy Days of Obligation in July. However, local bishops’ conferences may transfer certain obligations or encourage attendance (e.g., in some countries the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul is observed on the Sunday, but in 2025 it falls on its proper date, Sunday June 29, so no transfer needed).

Major Solemnities and Feasts

• July 3 — St. Thomas the Apostle (the doubter who became the missionary to India, whose finger in the wounds of Christ is an icon for every skeptic the Jubilee is bringing home)

• July 22 — St. Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles

• July 25 — St. James the Greater, Apostle, patron of pilgrims

• July 26 — Sts. Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary (World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, instituted by Pope Francis and now enriched by the Jubilee)

• July 29 — Sts. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

• July 31 — St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and master of discernment in the Holy Spirit

Every one of these feasts points to the same truth: the Gospel is carried on the feet of apostles, sustained by the prayer of contemplatives, and sealed with the Blood of the Lamb.

The Jubilee events in Rome will be electric with missionary fervor. The weekend of July 5–6 will see the Jubilee of Missionaries, when thousands of priests, religious, and lay people who have left everything to bring Christ to the ends of the earth will pass through the Holy Door. Expect habits from every continent, languages from every tongue, and testimonies that will make the hardest hearts crack open. Pope Leo XIV will celebrate the Mass and send them forth again with a new mandate — because the Jubilee is not a tourist event, but a great commissioning. Then, on the last weekend of the month, July 26–27, the Jubilee of Grandparents and the Elderly will be one of the most tender moments of the entire Holy Year. Tens of thousands of elderly pilgrims — many in wheelchairs, many who have not traveled in decades — will be personally welcomed by the Holy Father, who will preach on the irreplaceable role of the elderly in transmitting faith, praying for their families, and reminding the young that hope has a wrinkled face.

Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV has made July a month of spiritual warfare in the Precious Blood. His prayer intention for July, released in the Pope Video (filmed in collaboration with the Diocese of Mumbai), is for all those who feel discarded — the elderly, the chronically ill, the lonely — that they may know they are precious in the Blood of Christ. On July 1 he will lead a worldwide act of entrustment to the Precious Blood of Jesus, asking every parish to expose the Blessed Sacrament beneath a crucifix for adoration throughout the month.

Around the world the Church is already burning with this fire.

In Africa, the bishops of South Sudan have declared July a month of reconciliation, with massive Precious Blood processions through villages still scarred by war, led by catechists who risk their lives daily. The Church in Madagascar is preparing to welcome hundreds of elderly pilgrims who will walk for days to reach the shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows for the July 26 Jubilee.

In Asia, the Vietnamese Church — still celebrating the canonization of their martyrs — is organizing underground transmissions of the Rome missionary Jubilee for persecuted communities in the north. Indian bishops are mobilizing tens of thousands of lay missionaries for door-to-door evangelization throughout July, carrying only a crucifix and a bottle of blessed water from the Precious Blood relic in Kerala.

In Latin America, the bishops of Peru are hosting a continental meeting of elderly Catholics in Lima, with many traveling by bus for weeks to be present for the July 26 feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne. Brazilian favelas are preparing “Precious Blood missions” — teams of young people bringing the Eucharist and confession to the forgotten corners of the cities.

In Europe, the Spanish bishops are leading a national pilgrimage of grandparents and grandchildren to Santiago de Compostela, arriving on July 25 for the feast of St. James. The German Church is organizing “Precious Blood healing services” in every cathedral throughout July for victims of abuse and their families.

In the United States, many dioceses are combining the National Eucharistic Revival with Precious Blood devotions — 40-hour adorations, parish missions, and public processions with the relic of the Precious Blood where available. Several bishops have asked every parish to offer a weekly Holy Hour specifically for the sanctification of priests and the protection of the elderly.

Our bishops are shepherding with prophetic courage, many issuing strong letters reminding the faithful that devotion to the Precious Blood is not optional piety but the very heart of the Gospel.

Our priests will carry the heaviest load this July — hearing confessions from returning prodigals moved by the missionary testimonies, anointing the elderly, and preaching without compromise that only the Blood of Christ can wash away the sins of the world. Seminaries are reporting that the missionary Jubilee has ignited a wave of applications from young men who say, “I want to spend my life pouring out the Blood of Christ in the Eucharist and in absolution.”

And our consecrated men and women — especially the many elderly sisters who have given seventy or eighty years to Christ — will be the silent powerhouse of July. Cloistered communities are being flooded with requests to “adopt” an elderly pilgrim spiritually for the Jubilee. Many monasteries of contemplative nuns have committed to perpetual adoration of the Precious Blood throughout the entire month.

My dear brothers and sisters, July 2025 is the month to plead the Precious Blood over every wound in your family, your parish, your nation. Teach your children the Chaplet of the Precious Blood. Bring your grandparents to Mass and let them tell the stories of faith. If you are young, find an elderly person and listen — because the Blood that makes the young fearless is the same Blood that makes the old wise.

Jesus Christ shed every drop. There is nothing more precious. The Jubilee is the acceptable time to plunge into that fountain.