Pope on Good Friday hears children tell of pandemic losses

Vatican City - Children’s reflections of regret or other emotional moments of their life were read aloud, alternately, by a boy and a girl, as the pope listened.

Pope Francis prayed that people don’t feel lost amid the problems of the pandemic as he listened to children’s poignant accounts of sorrow and loneliness, which provided the motif for an unusual Way of the Cross torch-lit Good Friday procession in St. Peter’s Square.

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Sitting under a canopy erected over a platform outside St. Peter’s Basilica on a warm evening, Francis presided over the procession, which, for a second year due to pandemic concerns, couldn’t be held at its traditional venue, Rome’s Colosseum. The appointment at the ancient arena normally draws thousands of pilgrims, tourists and Romans. But pandemic safety measures have seen tourism practically vanish from Italy.

Instead, candles were placed in a circle around the square’s central obelisk. The flames, moving in a breeze, cast golden reflections on the dark gray cobblestones of the square. A nun helped a young boy carry a tall, lightweight slender cross at the start of the procession.

Children’s reflections of regret or other emotional moments of their life were read aloud, alternately, by a boy and a girl, as the pope listened.

One child wrote plaintively of loneliness in the Covid-19 pandemic, from not being able to visit her grandparents to keep them safe from contagion and from missing volleyball teammates, school chums and teachers since schools in Italy have been closed for long stretches due to lockdown.

“The sadness of loneliness at times becomes unbearable,” the girl wrote.