Pope picks young Lebanese Catholics to write Good Friday meditations

January 29, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI has asked for two young Lebanese Catholics to prepare the meditations for the Way of the Cross devotion on Good Friday at the Coliseum in Rome.

The Pope has asked Maronite Catholic Patriarch Bechara Rai to supervise the preparation of the meditations. The young people who will write the texts have not been identified.

In announcing the Pope’s choice, the Vatican said that the Pope intended to ask “the whole Church to remember the Middle East, its problems and Christian communities in the land, in their prayers” on Good Friday. During his visit to Lebanon in September the Pope was particularly moved by a meeting with young people outside the Maronite Patriarch’s headquarters.

Each year the Pope chooses a new author for the meditations to be read at the Way of the Cross. Last year he chose an Italian married couple, Danilo and Anna Maria Zanzucchi, the founders of the New Families Movement. With this year’s choice he clearly wanted to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East, and especially the young Christians who face pressures to emigrate.

 

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Further information:

• Via Crucis: Meditations to Recall Middle East (VIS)
• Pope assigns Stations of the Cross texts to two young people from Lebanon (Vatican Insider)