Pope Invites Italian Archbishop to Prepare Via Crucis Meditations

Pope Francis has invited Archbishop Giancarlo Maria Bregantini C.S.S. of Campobasso-Bolano (Italy) to prepare this year’s meditations for the Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross).

As is customary, the Via Crucis will take place on Good Friday at the Colosseum in Rome.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Archbishop Bregantini expressed his gratitude to the Holy Father and was honored to prepare the meditations. On this occasion in particular, he said, “I have truly felt that passion of Jesus, intertwined with the passion of man, in prayer and in reflection.”

According to the Italian prelate, the Vatican entrusted him with the theme “Face of Christ, face of man”, a theme, he noted, which is “very wise.”

“The more you read the face of Jesus, the more you feel that He is incarnated in the thousands of sufferings of our time, and that He is already present in every tear,” the Archbishop said.

Archbishop Bregantini also noted that the Via Crucis, in itself, is a testament to the Holy Father’s recent Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, where he calls for the Gospel to be lived and brought to the margins of society.

“For me, Evangelii Gaudium has become a very lucid word, that precisely helps us to read and understand the tragedies of today, through the luminous, and above all, merciful face of Jesus,” he said.