Page/12 in Italy
From Rome
Despite the fact that it had initially been announced that Pope Francis would be present at the Via Crucis that was held on Good Friday in the Roman Colosseum, on Friday afternoon the Vatican reported that, due to the intense cold that is hitting Rome, the Pontiff he would follow the event from the residence of Santa Marta where he lives in the Vatican. The Holy See thus tried to avoid risks for Francisco, who last week was admitted to the Gemelli Polyclinic for respiratory problems. The Pope was discharged last Friday and in this week’s celebrations he appeared at the foot washing that he carried out on Holy Thursday in the Casal del Marmo youth prison in Rome.
It is not the first time that a Pope is absent from the Via Crucis. It happened once too, when John Paul II was sick. In the absence of the Pope, it was Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, Francis’ vicar in the bishopric of Rome, who was in charge of the celebration.
The Via Crucis
This year’s Via Crucis was entitled “Voices of peace in a world of war” and alluded to all the countries that suffer war, conflicts and persecutions. The different stations were read by three people with the testimony of men, priests, women, young people, mothers and nuns, who suffered wars and conflicts in Africa, Asia, Latin America. The names of these people were not given, surely to protect them.
The ceremony began by asking “Lord, we need your peace, that peace that we are not capable of building with our own strength.” The people who carried the cross and went touring the interior of the Colosseum, stopped at the stations of the Via Crucis and they exchanged the cross with others. Thousands of candles in the hands of the faithful that surrounded the Colosseum, decorated the religious night.
Built in the first century AD, the Colosseum was born as an amphitheater for gladiator fights and shows. Originally called the Flavian Amphitheatre, it was later known as the Colosseum in memory of Emperor Nero. Hundreds of Christians were martyred there when Christianity was not yet accepted by the Roman Empire. It was the Emperor Constantine, in the year 313 AD, who authorized the Christian religion. It is in memory of those Christian martyrs that the Via Crucis on Good Friday takes place in the Colosseum.
Testimonials from Africa
Among the many testimonies that were read on the Via Crucis — several of which Francis himself would have heard on his travels around the world — was that of a West African migrant: “My Via Crucis began six years ago, when I left my city After 13 days of travel we reached the desert and crossed it in 8 days, running into burned-out cars, corpses, until we reached Libya. The one who still owed money to the traffickers for the journey was locked up and tortured until he paid. Some lost their lives, others their reason. They promised me they would put me on a ship to Europe, but the trips were canceled and we didn’t get the money back. They were at war there (…) I found a job as a bricklayer to pay for another trip. Finally I went up with more than a hundred people in an inflatable boat. We sailed for hours until an Italian boat saved us.” But later they discovered “that the boat was returning to Libya. There we were locked up in a detention center, the worst place in the world. Ten months later he was in a boat again. The first night there was rough seas, four fell into the sea, we managed to save two. I fell asleep expecting to die. When I woke up, I saw people next to me who were smiling at me (…) the boat docked and some NGOs gave us food and clothes. I worked to pay for another trip. It was the sixth time; after three days at sea I reached Malta. I stayed in a center for six months and every afternoon I asked God why men like us should consider us enemies?
The testimony of two adolescents from North Africa recounted: “My name is Joseph, I am sixteen years old. I arrived at the displacement camp with my parents in 2015 and have lived there for more than eight years. If there had been peace, I would have stayed at home, where I was born, and enjoyed my childhood. Here life is not beautiful. I’m afraid of the future.” And the other guy’s text added: “I am Johnson and since 2014 I have lived in another camp for displaced persons. I am fourteen years old and I am in the third grade of primary school. Here life is not good, many children do not go to school because there are not schools for everyone. We want peace to return home.”
Latin America
A text by young people from Central America was also read: “We young people want peace. But often we fall, and the fall has many names: laziness, fear, discouragement and also the empty promises of an easy but dirty life, made of greed and corruption, throw us to the ground. This is what makes the spirals of drug trafficking, violence, dependencies and the exploitation of people grow.”
A mother from South America recounted: “In 2012 the explosion of a mine planted by the guerrillas destroyed my leg. From that moment I remember the screams of the people and the blood everywhere. But what terrified me the most was seeing my seven-month-old daughter, covered in blood, with many pieces of glass embedded in her face (…) I, a victim of this senseless violence, at first experienced anger and resentment, but later I discovered that if I spread hate, I created even more violence” and for this reason she studied “to teach how to prevent accidents caused by the millions of mines scattered in our territory.”
Ukraine and Russia
The painful testimonies of a young Ukrainian and another Russian spoke of the ongoing war. “Last year, my father and my mother prepared me and my brother to take us to Italy, where our grandmother has been working for more than twenty years,” said the Ukrainian boy. We leave from Mariupol. At the border the soldiers stopped my father and told him that he had to stay in the Ukraine to fight. We continue on by bus. When I arrived in Italy I felt that they were stripping me of everything. Grandma tried to make me feel lucky, but I wanted to go home. Finally my family decided to return to Ukraine. Here the situation is still difficult, there is war everywhere, the city is destroyed”.
“I, on the other hand, am Russian -said the other young man-; Saying it almost makes me feel guilty, but at the same time I don’t understand why and I feel doubly bad, deprived of happiness and dreams for the future. Two years ago I saw my grandmother and my mother cry. A letter informed us that my older brother had died. Everyone told us that we should be proud, but at home there was only suffering. The same thing happened with my father and my grandfather; They also left and we don’t know anything about them.
Despite his absence from the Colosseum, Francis was present in St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday afternoon for the celebration of the Lord’s Passion, that is, the announcement of his crucifixion. On Saturday, the Pope will initially preside over the Easter vigil that will be held in Saint Peter’s Basilica and on Sunday he will preside over mass in Saint Peter’s Square and will read his Urbi et Orbi message to the city and the world.