For OneHope · Jubilee 2025, Rome

They asked for a pilgrim app in 60 days. Sixty days left no room for what they didn’t need.

A web app for pilgrims at the 2025 Jubilee in Rome, built in 60 days on OneHope’s designs: ten sites, two routes, and seven days of reflections, in five languages.

Years: 2024–2025
Sector: Nonprofit, pilgrimage
Role: The build, on OneHope’s designs, and hosting
Engagement: 60 days from sign-off to launch, then hosting
Team: Duncan Platt, with Daniel Hall’s team at OneHope
Closest service today: Delivery

A young pilgrim under the colonnade of St Peter’s Square, Forever Open on his phone, looking up toward the basilica

days from sign-off to launch: 60
languages, each live as its translation arrived: 5
sacred sites, with two routes between them: 10

What they asked

A pilgrim’s companion, in 60 days.

The Jubilee is the Catholic Church’s holy year, and in 2025 Rome expected more than 30 million pilgrims. OneHope, our client on Called to Thrive, wanted to walk with them: a companion for the city’s sacred sites, opened from a QR code, with nothing to install.

OneHope designed it. They gave us the screens and a detailed outline of how it should work, and about 60 days from sign-off to launch. They also wanted accounts: every pilgrim would sign in, and OneHope could follow each one’s progress.

What was really going on

Sixty days left no room for what they didn’t need.

Accounts sound small, but they aren’t. Sign-in, passwords, personal details to protect, and servers that answer every pilgrim one by one. That meant a bigger budget, more to build, higher hosting bills, and a real risk of missing the date.

And everything else was already hard. The app would run in five languages, English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, and most of the translations hadn’t been written yet. Pilgrims would open it on a roaming phone, or on the crowded Wi-Fi around the Vatican, so it had to load in a moment, every time.

So we asked what OneHope would do with an account for every pilgrim. The more we worked through it together, the clearer it became that they didn’t need one.

The call

No accounts. Keep each pilgrim’s place on their own phone.

Instead of a sign-in, a cookie on each phone remembered which sites the pilgrim had visited and the day they’d started, so they could come back, tick sites off their list, and find the right reflection each morning and evening. With nothing personal to look up, every page could be made in advance and served from Cloudflare’s network, close to the pilgrims, so a crowd would be no harder to serve than one pilgrim.

The trade-off: OneHope gave up knowing who its pilgrims were, and each pilgrim’s progress lived on one phone. Switch phones, or clear the browser, and the list started again.

What we did

Build the sites, the routes, and a week of reflections.

OneHope designed the app and wrote every word. We built it on their designs, turned their outline into a working app, and hosted it.

Ten sites
Context for each, from St Peter’s Basilica to the Colosseum, with videos from partners like The Chosen, and a check-in to tick it off.
Two routes
Themed walks between the sites: “A Priceless Inheritance” and “Hope Through Trials”.
A week that starts when you do
Seven days of reflections, morning and evening, counted from the day each pilgrim began.
Prayer that keeps time
Lectio Divina, a slow, prayerful reading of scripture, at two of the sites: the words scroll on screen as the audio plays.
Languages as they arrived
Five languages, built so each translation could go live the day it came in, without waiting on us.

The role

Duncan Platt led the build, with Daniel Hall, who led the project at OneHope, as he had on Called to Thrive. OneHope designed the app and managed its content; we built it and hosted it.

The app

Ten sites, one journey.

The home screen greets pilgrims for the time of day and suggests a route. At each site, a check-in ticks it off, with what to notice while you’re there and videos to watch. At two sites, a Lectio Divina reads scripture aloud as the words scroll by.

The home screen: a dark map of Rome with a marker at each site, “Good Evening”, the route “A Priceless Inheritance”, and “Where to Next?” with the Pantheon — Scroll the first two screens to see the whole page. The home screen and St Peter’s are in English; the Lectio Divina is in Italian.

Saint Peter’s Basilica, checked in: a Holy Door location, “While you are here” with a reflection and Psalm 103, and digital experiences, one from The Chosen — Scroll the first two screens to see the whole page. The home screen and St Peter’s are in English; the Lectio Divina is in Italian.

What changed

Live in 60 days, in five languages.

We started on 7 October 2024, and the app went live on 5 December, almost three weeks before the first Holy Door opened on Christmas Eve: ten sites, two routes, seven days of reflections, and two Lectio Divina experiences, with each language going live as its translation arrived.

It was simpler to build and cheaper to run than an app with accounts, and there were no pilgrims’ names or passwords to protect.

Afterwards

A year of pilgrims, then the Holy Doors closed.

By the Vatican’s count, about 33.5 million pilgrims came to Rome from 185 countries during the Jubilee. The Holy Doors closed in January 2026, and with them the year the app was built for.

We hosted the app for OneHope, and their team managed it and its content.

Who carried it forward

OneHope’s team, who managed the app and its content. We hosted it.

In their words

At OneHope, working with Duncan and BoldOrion felt like having someone on our team who understood both the technical challenge and the heart of the mission. Duncan brought real quality to the work, spotted problems we might otherwise have missed, and was the person I trusted when something complicated needed solving. He didn’t just build what we asked for, he helped us make it better.