Tens of thousands of faithful attend this Sunday the easter mass in the St. Peter’s Square in the Vaticanafter which Pope Francis will pronounce his traditional blessing “Urbi et Orbi” (“to the city and the world”), in which he will refer to the conflicts that affect the planet.
The Holy Father’s message is expected to evoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as it did in 2022, but also the increase in tensions in the middle east and the death of migrants in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea.
Francis, whose health is increasingly fragile and uses a wheelchair due to pain in one knee, will contact the faithful during a tour of the popemobile in Saint Peter’s Square.
On Saturday night, the 86-year-old pope, who was hospitalized last week, presided over the Easter Vigil Mass in the basilica of Saint Peter from Rome for two and a half hours, in the presence of some 8,000 people.
Pope Francis invited to “rediscover the memory that regenerates hope” in the face of the “power of evil”” the “logics of calculation and indifference that seem to govern society, the cancer of corruption, the spread of injustice, the icy winds of war”.
The father of the 1.3 billion Catholics one by one baptized eight adults, men and women, from Albania, United States, Nigeria, Italy and Venezuela.
On Friday, due to the cold, the pope annulled their participation in the traditional Via Crucis organized in the Rome Coliseumbut he presided over the celebration of the Passion.
Holy Week and Easter, which commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus, are the highlights of the year on the Catholic calendar.
News in development…
