Pope Francis presided over a Good Friday service in St Peter’s Basilica forward of a night-time procession at Rome’s Colosseum for essentially the most sombre day within the Christian calendar, marking Jesus’ dying by crucifixion.
Good Friday leads on Sunday to Easter, an important and joyous date within the Church’s liturgical calendar – commemorating the day Christians consider Jesus rose from the lifeless.
Francis will preside at an Easter Vigil service on Saturday after which on Sunday rejoice Easter Mass and browse his twice-annual “Urbi et Orbi” (to the town and world) message and blessing from the central balcony of St. Peter’s.
The 87-year-old pontiff, who’s hobbled by mobility and respiratory points however seemed fitter this week, arrived in St Peter’s with a wheelchair as he joined cardinals and bishops for Good Friday’s Passion of the Lord service.
In earlier years, Francis would begin it prostrating himself on the marble ground of the basilica, however his bodily situation now not permits him to take action. Instead, he prayed silently in entrance of the altar from his wheelchair.
The Passion of the Lord options chants in Latin that recount occasions from Jesus’ arrest to his burial, and is among the few companies the place the pope doesn’t ship a homily, leaving it to the preacher of the papal family.
Later on Friday, Francis was set to preside over the “Via Crucis” procession on the Colosseum, through which contributors stroll across the historical Roman area holding a cross, re-enacting Jesus’ final hours and stopping to hope and listen to meditations.
Francis personally wrote this yr’s meditations, a primary in his 11-year papacy. They included praises for meekness and forgiveness in response to acts of evil, and prayers for persecuted Christians and struggle victims.
The pope, who has referred to as for the Church to change into much less male-dominated, additionally hailed the ladies who helped Jesus whereas he carried the cross, and pleaded for “those (women) who in our own day are exploited and endure injustice and indignity”.
In one other signal of his give attention to ladies, Francis on Thursday carried out the foot-washing ritual, which recollects Jesus’ gesture of humility to his apostles on the Last Supper, in a ladies’s jail in Rome.
Source: www.anews.com.tr