Millions Listen to Pope’s Meditations

Pope John Paul carried a wooden cross at the ruins of the Colosseum on Friday night to lead Roman Catholics in the new millennium’s first “Way of the Cross” procession.

Asking God to “grant to the men and women of the third millennium the light of faith,” the Pope presided at a solemn “Stations of the Cross” service commemorating 14 events in the hours of Christ’s arrest, crucifixion and burial.

For only the second of the 22 Easter seasons of his pontificate, the Pope himself wrote the texts of the 14 meditations read by speakers at the traditional “Via Crucis.”

The 79-year-old Pope, who visited the places of Christ’s passion in Jerusalem last month, later addressed a crowd of some 50,000 people from atop the Palatine Hill overlooking the Colosseum.

Since 1994, when he broke his leg in a fall, the Pope has not carried the cross for the entire service. He entrusted it to seven others, including a refugee boy from Angola, to carry it for all but two of the stations.

The Pope, wearing a red cape over his white cassock and using a cane, looked tired during the ceremony, which tested his stamina during one of the most hectic weeks of the Church’s liturgical year.

The service at the Colosseum, where early Christians were killed during Roman times, was watched by millions around the world on television.

In his address at the end of the candlelight event, the Pope said Christians can better understand the plight of those who suffer injustice, humiliation, pain and despair today if they meditate on Christ’s suffering.

“Soon, from this place sanctified by the blood of the first martyrs, we shall go each on our own way. We shall return home, turning over in our minds the very same events [of Christ’s passion],” he said.

“Who, if not the condemned Savior, can fully understand the pain of those unjustly condemned. Who, if not the King scorned and humiliated, can meet the expectations of the countless men and women who live without hope or dignity?” he said.

“Who, if not the crucified Son of God, can know the sorrow and loneliness of so many lives shattered and without a future?”

The Pope also touched on human rights concerns in the meditations he wrote and which were read to the crowd by two Italian actors.

“Do not permit that we should turn away from those who are crushed by the cross of illness, loneliness, hunger or injustice,” he asked God.

“Do not permit that there should be weeping for us and for the men and women of the new century,” he said.

Good Friday marked the start of a busy three-day Easter period for the Pope.

Earlier on Friday, the Pope heard the confessions of 10 ordinary Catholics chosen at random in St. Peter’s and presided at a long “Passion of the Lord” service in the basilica.

The Pope then plans to preside at an Easter Eve service.

On Easter Sunday, the most important day of the Christian liturgical calendar, he will deliver his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and the World”) blessing and message to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square.