For some, the pope’s big Holy Year only aggravates housing crisis as overtourism pushes out Romans

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

Francis urged Romans to pray for their mayor — “He has a lot to do” — but to nevertheless welcome the upcoming Jubilee as a time of spiritual repair and renewal. “These worksites are fine, but beware: Don’t forget the worksites 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 include special Jubilee Masses for the faithful from all walks of life: artists, adolescents, migrants, teachers and prisoners.

And while the Jubilee’s official start means the worst of the construction headache is ending, the arrival of a projected 32 million pilgrims in 2025 is set to only increase congestion in the Eternal City and intensify a housing crunch that has been driving residents away.

Like many European art capitals, Rome has been suffering from overtourism as the Italian travel sector rebounds from COVID-19: Last year, a record high number of people visited Italy, 133.6 million, with foreign tourists pushing Italy over the EU average in growth of the travel sector, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported.

Rome, with its innumerable artistic treasures, the Vatican and Italy’s busiest airport, was the top city in terms of nights booked in registered lodging, ISTAT said.

And yet for all its grande bellezze, Rome is hardly a modern European metropolis. It has notoriously inadequate public transportation and garbage collection. For the past two post-pandemic summers, taxis have been so hard to come by that the city of Rome authorized 1,000 new cab licenses for 2025.

Rome’s growing housing crisis — rents have risen about 10% this year — has gotten so bad that vigilantes have taken to going out at night with wire cutters to snip off the keyboxes on short-term apartment rentals that are blamed in part for driving up rents and driving out residents.

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

All of which has set the stage for a Jubilee opening Dec. 24 that is being received as something of a mixed bag. For the Vatican, the Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition of the faithful making pilgrimages 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’s a chance to take advantage of some 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) in public funds to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of decay and neglect and bring it up to modern, European standards.

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

“The Jubilee has significantly worsened this phenomenon that we have seen, above all in the last months,” said Alberto Campailla, director of the association Nonna Roma, which has been slapping stickers “Your BnB, our eviction” on Pigneto keyboxes to protest the growth of tourist rentals.

Rome’s relationship with Jubilees dates 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. Even then, the number of pilgrims was so significant that Dante referred to them in his “Inferno.”

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

Some works have been controversial, such as the construction of Via della Concilliazione, the broad boulevard leading to St. Peter’s Square. An entire neighborhood was razed to make it for the 1950 Jubilee.

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

The project, at 79.5 million euros ($82.5 million) the most ambitious of the 2025 Jubilee works, ran into a predictable glitch over the summer when archaeological ruins were discovered during the dredging of the tunnel. The artifacts were transferred to the castle museum and the digging resumed, with the grand opening scheduled for Monday, the eve of the Jubilee’s start.

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

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

“I want all diocesan realities that own real estate to offer their contribution to stem the housing emergency with signs of charity and solidarity to generate hope in the thousands of people in the city of Rome who are in a condition of precarious housing,” Francis wrote.

Gualtieri has gone farther, demanding alongside other mayors that the national government pass the necessary norms to let them regulate the proliferation of short-term rentals, which have been blamed for reducing the available long-term rental stock and driving up prices.

“This for us is an emergency because we need to prevent entire blocks of the center from emptying out and turning into B&Bs, because the presence of residents in the center is fundamental,” Gualtieri said.

Just this week, Gualtieri joined nine other European mayors in urging the European Commission do more to address the overall urban housing crisis in many cities, where homelessness and rising rents are driving out students and workers and threatening the cities’ abilities to attract and retain talent.

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

“As long as 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 Jubilee promotional event. “To think that Rome might reduce the presence of pilgrims or tourists would in my opinion inflict a wound that doesn’t belong to it.”

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