CV NEWS FEED // Pope Francis is writing the meditations himself for this year’s Good Friday Via Crucis at the Colosseum, the Holy See Press Office revealed on March 26.
According to a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops article, this is the first year in which the Pope, who was elected in 2013, has decided to write the meditations himself. Pope St. John Paul II began the practice of entrusting the writing of the meditations to other individuals in 1985 but wrote the meditations himself for the Via Crucis in 2000. While Pope Benedict XVI never wrote the meditations during his papacy, he wrote them in 2005, less than one month before he was elected pope.
Vatican News reported that the 14 meditations that accompany the Stations of the Cross are generally written by different individuals. This year, the meditations will instead be written by the Holy Father himself.
The theme for the reflections is “In prayer with Jesus on the Way of the Cross.” According to Vatican News and the Holy See Press Office, making the Way of the Cross is “an act of meditation and spirituality,” focusing on Jesus and, in 2024, the Year of Prayer, as Pope Francis designated.
“It will be focused, he noted, on Christ who makes the Way of the Cross and allows one to walk alongside Him,” Vatican News reported. “‘It is all centered on what Jesus experiences in that moment, and it is clear that it also enlarges on the theme of suffering,’ with a broad, but indirect reference to current events.”
Each year, the Pope presides over Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome on the evening of Good Friday in a tradition that dates back to the 18th century, according to a 2019 Vatican News article.
