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Holy Father Presides at Stations of the Cross in Colosseum

‘Lord Jesus, help us to see in Your Cross all the crosses of the world’

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Pope Francis presided over the Stations of the Cross on the evening of Good Friday in the Colosseum in Rome. The meditations for the service were written by Sister Eugenia Bonetti.
See the full text of the meditations here
Pope Francis concluded the even with the following prayer:
Prayer of the Holy Father
Lord Jesus, help us to see in Your Cross all the crosses of the world:
the cross of people hungry for bread and love;
the cross of lonely people abandoned even by their own children and relatives;
the cross of people thirsting for justice and peace;
the cross of people who do not have the comfort of faith;
the cross of the elders wh0 stagger under the weight of years and loneliness;
the cross of the migrants who find the doors closed due to fear and hearts locked in by political calculations;
the cross of the little ones, wounded in their innocence and in their purity;
the cross of humanity that wanders in the darkness of uncertainty and in the darkness of the culture of  living only for the moment;
the cross of families broken by treachery, by the seductions of the evil one or by the murderer lightness and selfishness;
the cross of the consecrated who tirelessly seek to bring Your light into the world and feel it rejected, mocked and humiliated;
the cross of consecrated persons who, along the way, have forgotten their first love;
the cross of your children who, believing in You and trying to live according to Your word, find themselves marginalized and discarded even by their families and their peers;
the cross of our weaknesses, of our hypocrisies, of our betrayals, of our sins and of our many broken promises;
the cross of Your Church that, faithful to Your Gospel, bears your Your love with difficulty even among the baptized themselves;
the cross of the Church, your bride, who feels herself continually attacked from inside and outside;
the cross of our common home that seriously withers under our egoistic eyes and
blinded by greed and power.
Lord Jesus, revive in us the hope of resurrection and your definitive victory against every evil and every death. Amen!
© Libreria Editrice Vatican
[00699-IT.01] [Original text: Italian] ZENIT Working Translation

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Jim Fair

Jim Fair is a husband, father, grandfather, writer, and communications consultant. He also likes playing the piano and fishing. He writes from the Chicago area.

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