For some, the Pope’s big Holy Year only exacerbates the housing crisis as overtourism drives out Romans.

When Pope Francis left the Vatican earlier this month for his traditional Christmas walk through the center, he acknowledged what many Romans have been complaining about for months: that his Great plans for a Holy Year They had turned their city into a giant construction pit, with roadworks clogging traffic and destroying major thoroughfares, scaffolding covering prized monuments, and short-term rentals gobbling up apartment blocks.

Francis urged Romans to pray for their mayor – “He has much to do” – but still welcome the upcoming Jubilee as a time of spiritual reparation and renewal. “These workplaces are fine, but be careful: don’t forget the workplaces of the soul!” Francis said.

When he formally opens the Holy Year next week, Francis will launch a dizzying 12-month calendar of events that includes special Jubilee masses for faithful from all walks of life: artists, teenagers, immigrants, teachers and prisoners.

And while the official start of the Jubilee means the worst of the construction headache is ending, the projected arrival of 32 million pilgrims in 2025 will only increase. Congestion in the Eternal City and intensify the housing crisis that has been driving away residents.

As many European art capitalsRome has been suffering from overtourism as the Italian tourism sector recovers from COVID-19: last year, a record number of people visited Italy, 133.6 million, and foreign tourists pushed Italy above the EU average in growth of the national tourism sector. reported the ISTAT statistics office.

Rome, with its countless art treasures, the Vatican and Italy’s busiest airport, was the city with the highest number of nights booked in registered accommodation, ISTAT said.

And yet, for all its grandeur, Rome is not a modern European metropolis. It has notoriously inadequate public transportation and garbage collection. Over the past two post-pandemic summers, taxis have been so hard to come by that the city of Rome authorized 1,000 new taxi licenses by 2025.

Rome’s growing housing crisis has gotten so bad that vigilantes have started going out at night with wire cutters to cut the key boxes of short-term rental apartments, which are blamed for raising rents and driving out residents. the residents.

“The market is out of control and has definitely gotten worse with touristification, with the additional burden of the Jubilee,” said Roberto Viviani, a university researcher whose landlord recently refused to renew his lease and handed the apartment over to an agency to operate. as a vacation rental. “The surprise was that he gave the Jubilee as a justification.”

All of which has set the stage for a Jubilee opening on December 24 that is being received as something of a mixed bag. For the Vatican, the Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition in which the faithful make a pilgrimage to Rome every 25 years to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and receiving indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins in the process.

For the city of Rome, it is an opportunity to tap some €4 billion ($4.3 billion) in public funds to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of decay and abandonment and adapt it to modern European standards.

But for Romans who have seen the short-term rental market take over neighborhoods like Pigneto, on the capital’s eastern flank, it’s just another pressure point in a long-running battle to keep their neighborhoods flavored with Affordable rentals for ordinary Romans. .

“The Jubilee has significantly aggravated this phenomenon that we have observed, especially in recent months,” said Alberto Campailla, director of the Nonna Roma association, which has pasted “Your BnB, our eviction” stickers on Pigneto’s key boxes to protest against the growth of tourist rentals.

Rome’s relationship with the Jubilees dates back to 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated the first Holy Year in what historians say marked the definitive designation of Rome as the center of Christianity. Already then, the number of pilgrims was so important that Dante referred to them in his “Inferno.”

Major public works projects have long accompanied the Holy Years, including the creation of the Sistine Chapel (commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV for the Jubilee of 1475) and the great Vatican garage (for the Jubilee of 2000 under St. John Paul II).

Some works have been controversial, such as the construction of Via della Concilliazione, the wide boulevard that leads to St. Peter’s Square. An entire neighborhood was razed to prepare for the 1950 Jubilee.

The main public works project for the 2025 Jubilee is actually an extension of that boulevard: a pedestrian plaza along the Tiber linking Via della Conciliazione with nearby Castel St. Angelo, with the main road between them diverted to an underground tunnel.

The 79.5 million euro ($82.5 million) project, the most ambitious of the Jubilee 2025 works, suffered a predictable technical problem over the summer when archaeological ruins were discovered during tunnel dredging. The objects were moved to the castle museum and excavations resumed, with the grand opening scheduled for Monday, the eve of the start of the Jubilee.

Mayor Roberto Gualtieri has pointed out another feature of the 2025 projects that previous Jubilees have largely ignored: the emphasis on parks and “green” initiatives, in line with Francis’s focus on environmental sustainability.

But Francis himself has recognized the paradox of the Jubilee in the lives of ordinary Romans. He he wrote to the priests of the Rome area and religious orders earlier this year to ask them to “make a brave gesture of love” by offering any unused housing or apartments in their increasingly empty convents and monasteries to Romans threatened with eviction.

“I want all diocesan realities that own properties to offer their contribution to stop the housing emergency with signs of charity and solidarity to generate hope in the thousands of people in the city of Rome who find themselves in precarious housing conditions,” Francis wrote. .

Gualtieri has gone further, Demanding together with other mayors that the national government approve the necessary regulations that allow it to regulate the proliferation of short-term rentals, which have been blamed for reducing the stock of available long-term rentals and driving up prices by an average of 10% during the year past.

“For us, this is an emergency because we must prevent entire blocks of downtown from being emptied and converted into B&Bs, because the presence of residents in the center is essential,” Gualtieri said.

But the Vatican’s point man for the Jubilee, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, defended the Holy Year as part of the fabric of Rome and denied that the influx of pilgrims was anything other than a net gain for the city.

“Since it has existed, Rome has always been called a ‘common home,’ a city that has always been open to everyone,” Fisichella said on the sidelines of a promotional event for the Jubilee. “To think that Rome could reduce the presence of pilgrims or tourists would be, in my opinion, inflicting a wound that does not belong.”

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