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Suntil it is on the empty Petersplatz on Good Friday 2020. It is the almost double silence found over the Eternal City, closed by the curfew in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. You can only hear the chirping of the seagulls surrounding the square and St. Peter’s Basilica.
After four weeks of “confinement”, a strange community, a community, had formed in front of the barriers in the Plaza de San Pedro. First are the police and carabinieri, including army soldiers, who ensure that the curfew is enforced and that they are supposed to protect against attack. Secondly, there are many homeless people living under Bernini’s colonnades on the edge of Peterplatz and along Via della Conciliazione. There they receive hot and cold meals, delivered several times a day by Caritas and other aid organizations. And then, thirdly, it is the journalists who stay at the last door. There, people on television make their announcements: the empty St. Peter’s Square and the mighty St. Peter’s Basilica as a visual illustration of what the crown virus did from Italy and from the headquarters of the world church in this ” Settimana Santa “(Easter).
The Good Friday ceremonies began with a mass with Pope Francis at 6 p.m. in St. Peter’s Basilica behind closed doors. Lying on the ground, the 83-year-old pontiff prayed before that 15th-century crucifix that has been particularly revered in Rome since the plague epidemic of 1522. The Pope brought the so-called plague cross from the Church of San Marcello to Corsican to the Vatican for Easter and Easter. The service was broadcast on the Vatican’s media site. The Vatican changed the liturgy due to the pandemic of the crown. An eleventh was added to the ten great prayers on Good Friday: Francis and the few bishops, priests, and nuns gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica asked for comfort and strength for the sick and medical personnel, as well as peace for the deceased. In the end, only the Pope worshiped the cross by touching and kissing.
In his homily, the Capuchin monk and preacher of the papal house, Raniero Cantalamessa, said that the coronavirus pandemic had freed many of the world from “omnipotence”. It also led people to show more solidarity.
The traditional procession of the cross began in St. Peter’s Square at 9 p.m. This has taken place at the Colosseum since 1964, for thousands of believers and pilgrims it is perhaps the most impressive experience of Easter celebrations in Rome. The path of the short procession in the empty round of St. Peter’s Square was marked with candles on the pavement. The texts for the special Via Crucis in 2020 come from prisoners and employees of the “Due Palazzi” detention center in Padua. The authors, who remained anonymous, used Jesus’ 14 stations to describe their personal experiences of guilt and suffering from the funeral sentence. Personal testimonies came, among other things, from parents who cannot find peace after the murder of their daughter; a mother who is exposed to stigma due to her delinquent child; a criminal sentenced to life in prison who cannot accept his guilt; by a priest who only obtained his acquittal of false charges after ten years.
Five members of the penitentiary center and the Vatican Health Office, in uniform, medical gowns, civilian clothes and priestly clothing, crossed the stages of the processional path. They carried the simple wooden cross and four torches alternately. They did not wear a face mask, but strictly kept the safety distance from each other. Pope Francis watched the procession, which lasted about an hour and a half, under an illuminated canopy on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. He did not seem tired and exhausted at the end of the procession when the black wooden cross was presented to him. This Saturday the Easter celebrations for the resurrection of Christ begin in the Vatican. Pope Francis will celebrate all the celebrations, in the presence of only a few priests, nuns, and curia staff in an empty St. Peter’s Basilica, which may be filled with silence.
