Some Remarks on the Cartography of Hope

When Pope Francis announced the Holy Year 2025, he called on us to become pilgrims of hope. At the end of the Holy Year, Pope Leo issued an apostolic letter entitled Drawing New Maps of Hope. There is a focus in this paper on several principles on which a possible “cartography of hope” could be built in order to offer pilgrims of hope comprehensible and practical maps. There is an analysis of how to describe hope in a way that makes it accessible without losing its deeper meaning. We provide several historical and terminological notes on this question. We consequently explore the relationship of hope and probability and introduce Ariel Meirav’s model of external factor to contribute to the understanding of Christian hope in today’s “scientific” world. Finally, we distinguish between the hope of “not yet” and the hope of “despite” as an invitation to deepen the experience of hope “here and now.”