After a visit in late February to Gemelli Isola Tiberina Hospital and undergoing diagnostic tests, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis was “still feeling unwell,” but planned to preside over Holy Week liturgies nevertheless.
On February 29, the Pope’s schedule for Holy Week and Easter was announced. It will include Palm Sunday, the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday, and presiding over liturgies on each day of the Easter Triduum. He is also scheduled to preside over Mass on Easter Sunday and will deliver his customary Urbi Et Orbi address on Easter Sunday at noon. Recently, for health reasons, he has delegated some of his public responsibilities to others — including reading his public addresses — so it remains to be seen whether he will need to delegate some of these activities this week.
In a video address to the Confraternity of Mérida, Spain on March 16, Pope Francis spoke about the grace of Holy Week and what it means for us:
Holy Week is a time of grace, let us not forget; it is a time of grace that the Lord gives us so that we can open the doors of our hearts, our parishes, our confraternities. To “open” and to “go out” is what we are asked to do in Holy Week, to open the heart and go towards Jesus and others, and also to bring the light and joy of our faith. Always go out! And do so with the love and tenderness of God, with respect and patience, knowing that we give our hands, our feet, our heart, but it is God who guides us and shows us the way.
Palm Sunday Mass will be held at St. Peter’s Square, beginning with a procession of deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals and lay people carrying olive tree branches, palm fronds, and weave palms, all blessed by Pope Francis. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week and memorializes Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem; palms are a symbolic gesture of “laying down our hearts before Jesus.”
Holy Thursday will begin with the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica; the Holy Father will bless the oil of the sick, the oil of catechumens, and the chrism oil to be used in the Diocese of Rome for the coming year. Continuing with his annual custom, Pope Francis will not celebrate the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper at St. Peter’s, but will visit the women’s prison at the Rebibbia correctional facility in Rome. He will celebrate Mass with the prisoners and, assuming it all goes as planned, will wash the feet of twelve of those who are housed there. Justin McClellan of Catholic News Service noted that in the maternity section of the prison allows mothers who are incarcerated to keep their children there until they reach 3 years old.
Good Friday will be commemorated with the liturgy for the Celebration of the Passion of the Lord in St. Peter’s Basilica at 5 pm, and Pope Francis will lead the Stations of the Cross in Rome’s Colosseum by candlelight later that evening. In 2023, Pope Francis was unable to attend the annual Good Friday procession at the Colosseum after being diagnosed with bronchitis, marking the first time since 2005 that a pope was not in attendance at the Way of the Cross. Typically the Stations are written by representatives of a certain group or on a particular theme (migrants, prisoners, the family, peace), but such details do not seem to have been announced publicly yet.
[UPDATE: Pope Francis is writing his own Via Crucis’ meditations for the Way of the Cross this Good Friday, according to Vatican News.]
On Saturday, Pope Francis will preside over the Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at 7:30 p.m. and will celebrate Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square, followed by his annual Easter Urbi et Orbi (“to the city (of Rome) and the world”) at noon.
During this Lenten season of 2024, the Holy Father has reminded the faithful that “Lent is the season of grace in which the desert can become once more– in the words of the prophet Hosea – the place of our first love (Hos 2:16-17).”
In his message for Lent 2024, Pope Francis described “the exodus from slavery to freedom” as anything but an abstract journey.
“If our celebration of Lent is to be concrete, the first step is to desire to open our eyes to reality. When the Lord calls out to Moses from the burning bush, he immediately shows that he is a God who sees and, above all, hears: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex 3:7-8).
As always, and especially during this season of fasting, prayer and almsgiving, the Holy Father urges us to “hear the cry of so many of our oppressed brothers and sisters” and to let it move us to concrete action.
Image: Vatican Media
Kristi McCabe is an award-winning freelance writer, Catechist, a former teacher and editor who lives with her family in Owensboro, Kentucky. As an adoptive mother of four and an adoptee herself, Kristi is an avid supporter of pro-life ministries. She is active in her local parish and has served as Eucharistic minister and in various children's ministries.
Popular Posts