VATICAN CITY, April 4. /TASS/. The Vatican will hold a number of cultural events for the Year of Jubilee to be celebrated in 2025.

The cultural initiative is aimed at the large number of people expected to make a pilgrimage to Rome, Pro-prefect for the Section of New Evangelization of the Dicastery for Evangelization Archbishop Rino Fisichella said.

Details about the events will be made public in May but a number of exhibitions, concerts and movie shows preceding the Year of Jubilee are already planned for later this year. The Year of Jubilee will formally start on December 24 with the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica. "We say it time and again that the Year of Jubilee has a deep spiritual meaning and pilgrimage should bring hope," the Archbishop said.

An exhibition of Orthodox icons is planned to be opened in November in a church in downtown Rome. The exhibition is expected to showcase icons from Russia and Ukraine in particular. The display is organized in cooperation with Vatican Museums with icons in their collection.

Two art exhibitions are also slated to open in the run-up to the Year of Jubilee. Two artists will be featured - Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali. The religious mysticism of Chagall inspired by the Holy Scripture and memories of his native village near Vitebsk expresses the situation in the modern world to great effect, exhibitions overseer Don Alessio Geretti said. It is impossible to bring the artist’s paintings from Russia now for objective reasons, he told TASS. "But a bit of Russia is always present in his paintings," he said.

The other artist, Dali, was chosen because his work also has a deep connection to religion, as the Spaniard was brought up atheist and became a believer later in life, Geretti noted. "We want to show this creative path of the artist regarded as an eccentric person," he added. Both exhibitions are expected to open in the summer of 2025.