ROME – Four hands placed on the cross, those of Irina and from Beethe first Ukrainian, the second Russian, holding together the cross of the Via Crucis of Pope Francis, returned to the Colosseum in front of 10 thousand faithful, after two years of ceremonies in a deserted St Peter’s Square without people.
Irina and Albina look into each other’s eyes, shining eyes, friends of two peoples now at war and colleagues at the Campus Bio Medico in Rome, a nurse from Ukraine, a specialist in Russia. They look at each other, they brush their fingers as they carry the weight of the cross, they look at the sky, side by side, they do not speak.
And silent, surprisingly, remains the prayer of the thirteenth station of the Via Crucis, theirs, changed at the last minute. Orazio Coclite, the historical voice of the procession, should have read a meditation written in recent weeks in the Vatican together with Ukrainian and Russian families. Instead, the text has been deleted, replaced by a few sentences: “In the face of death, silence speaks more than words. Let us therefore pause in prayerful silence and each one in our hearts pray for peace in the world“. “An expected change – the Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni explained last night – which limits the text to a minimum in order to rely on silence and prayer”.
The thirteenth meditation, on the other hand, should have spoken of “death around”, of “life that seems to lose value”, of that everything that “changes in a few seconds: existence, days, the carefree winter snow, picking up the children from school, work, hugs, friendships “, of the” finished tears “, of the” anger that has given way to resignation “. To then ask: “Lord, where are you? Speak in the silence of death and division and teach us to make peace, to be brothers and sisters, to rebuild what the bombs wanted to annihilate”.
But that text, like the presence of the two friends, Irina the Ukrainian and Albina the Russian, first attracted the ire of the Kiev embassy in Italy and then of the Ukrainian Catholic community. An “inappropriate and ambiguous” idea that “does not take into account the context of Russian military aggression”, thundered the archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. Last night, with a harsh and unprecedented gesture, the Ukrainian Catholic media even refused to broadcast the Via Crucis, in protest. And the association of Ukrainian Catholics in Italy had also said against it in recent days: “They shouldn’t have carried the cross together – he explained. Oles Horodetskyy – because we Ukrainians were crucified “.
The presence, on the other hand, was confirmed, no step backwards by the Vatican or by the two women, despite the pressure. “We have nothing to do with all this, our two peoples have nothing to do with it,” she explained. But that text was set aside and space was left for prayer for peace. That peace that Pope francesco he continues to ask incessantly: “Lord, bring the adversaries to shake hands, disarm the brother’s hand raised against his brother” and make sure that “where there is hatred harmony may flourish”, he told the faithful. The same tireless cry launched in a tweet a few minutes before the beginning of the rite: “Lord, convert our rebellious hearts to your heart, because we learn to follow projects of peace”.