GOOD FRIDAY: CONFESSIONS, LORD'S PASSION, WAY OF THE CROSS

VATICAN CITY, APR 13, 2001 (VIS) - As has become customary on Good Friday, John Paul II heard the confessions of various faithful in the Vatican Basilica shortly after 12 noon.

At 5:00 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica, the Holy Father presided over the celebration of the Lord's Passion. During the Liturgy of the Word, the Passion according to John was read, after which Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap, preacher of the Papal Household, gave the homily. The Liturgy of the Passion continued with the universal prayer and veneration of the Cross, and concluded with Holy Communion.

At 9:15 p.m. at the Colosseum, the Holy Father presided over the procession of the Way of the Cross. The meditation texts proposed for the 14 stations were composed by Servant of God Cardinal John Henry Newman, the bicentennial of whose birth is marked this year. John Paul II followed the ceremony kneeling on an area of the Palatine Hill which overlooks the Colosseum, and carried the cross for the last two stations, not just the final one as originally planned. During the other stations, the Cross was carried by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's vicar for the diocese of Rome, by a Roman family, a young woman from Rwanda, a woman from Bangkok, a woman from the Dominican Republic, and two Franciscan friars from the Holy Land.

At the end of the last station the Holy Father, laying aside the written text, addressed the faithful spontaneously with additional words: "'Ecce lignum crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit! Venite adoremus!' Today, for the first time in this Third Millennium, this confession was proclaimed in St. Peter's Basilica. In this same day, Good Friday, the same moving truth was proclaimed on all the continents, in all the countries of the world. 'Ecce lignum crucis!'"

"The Church of Christ confesses this divine and human reality: 'Crux, ave Crux! Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi, quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum'. ... May this truth ... be for us the light and strength of this time which we began a few months ago. Ave Crux! Ave Crux of the Roman Colosseum! Ave at the dawn of the Third Millennium! Ave across all the years and centuries of this new time which opens before us! Praised be Jesus Christ!"

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