GOOD FRIDAY: CONFESSIONS, LORD'S PASSION, VIA CRUCIS

VATICAN CITY, APR 21, 2000 (VIS) - At midday today, as is customary on Good Friday, the Holy Father confessed a number of the faithful in St. Peter's Basilica.
At 5 p.m. in the basilica, the Holy Father presided at the celebration of the Lord's Passion. Following the Liturgy of the Word, when the Passion according to St. John was read, a homily was given by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa O.F.M. Cap., preacher of the papal household. The liturgy continued with the universal prayer, the adoration of the cross and communion.

At 9:15 p.m. the Pope presided at the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) at the Colosseum. As was done in 1984, during the Holy Year of the Redemption, the texts of the meditations at the 14 stations were written by the Holy Father himself. John Paul II carried the cross to the first station, after which it was borne, in turn, by a bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East, a Chinese woman, an Indian woman, a Brazilian woman, an Ecuadorian woman, an African man and a Roman family.

After the last station of the Via Crucis, the Pope addressed the faithful: "The people of today need to meet Christ crucified and risen! 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? Who, if not the crucified Son of God, can know the sorrow and loneliness of so many lives shattered and without a future? ... Let us open our hearts to Christ: He himself will respond to our deepest yearnings. He himself will unveil for us the mysteries of His passion and Death on the Cross."

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