The “piecemeal third world war” in the via crucis of Pope francesco al Colosseum. For Good Friday 2023 Bergoglio wanted the fourteen meditations that retrace the ascent to Calvarythe passion, the death and the deposition in the tomb of Jesus were “voices of peace in a world of war”. From the drama of the conflict in Ukraine and in many others Villages of the planet where there is still fighting to that of migrants. “Right from Holy land – we read in the initial prayer of the via crucis – tonight the path of the cross winds its way behind you (Jesus, ed). We will walk it listening to yours sufferingreflected in that of brothers and sisters who in the world have suffered and suffer from the lack of pace, allowing us to delve into the testimonies and echoes that reached the ear and heart of the Pope also during his visits. I am echoes of peace that resurface in this ‘piecemeal third world war’, cries that come from Villages and areas today torn apart by violence, injustice and poverty. All the places where conflicts, hatred and persecutions are suffered are present in the prayers of this Good Friday”.
The meditation of the tenth station was written by a young Ukrainian and a Russian. “Last year, – writes the boy of Village mugged – dad and mum grabbed me and my younger brother to take us in Italia, where our grandmother has been working for more than twenty years. We started from Mariupol overnight. At the border the soldiers blocked my father and told him he had to stay in Ukraine to fight. We continued on pullman for another two days. Arrived in Italia i was sad. I felt stripped of All: completely naked. I didn’t know the lingua and I had no friends. Grandma tried hard to make me feel lucky but all I did was say I wanted to go home. Eventually my family decided to fall in Ukraine. Here the situation continues to be difficult, there is war on all sides, the city is destroyed. But in my heart there remained that certainty that my grandmother used to tell me about when I cried: ‘You’ll see, everything will pass. And with the help of God, peace will return’”.
Then follows the reflection of the young man from the aggressor country: “I, on the other hand, I am a Russian guy… as I say it I almost feel a sense of guilt, but at the same time I don’t understand why and I feel bad twice. Stripped of happiness and dreams for the future. I’ve been seeing her cry for two years nonna and the mamma. A letter informed us that my older brother passed away, I still remember it on his day 18th birthday, smiling and shining like the sun, and all this just a few weeks before leaving on a long journey. Everyone told us we should be proud, but at home there was just so much suffering and sadness. The same thing also happened for dad and grandfather, they too have left and we don’t know anything. Some of my classmates, with great fear, whispered in my ear that there was war. Back home I wrote a prayer: Jesusplease, let there be peace in the whole world and that we can all be brothers”.
The drama of the migrants instead it lives again in the meditation of the second station: “My via crucis began six years ago, when I left my city. After thirteen days of travel we arrived in the desert and we crossed it for eight days, coming across burnt out cars, empty water cans, dead bodies of people, until we reached Libya. Those who still had to pay the smugglers for the crossing were locked up and tortured until they paid up. Some lost their lives, others their heads. They promised to put me on a ship to Europe, but the trips were canceled and we didn’t get the money back. There was the guerra and we came to ignore the violence and stray bullets. I got a job as a plasterer to pay for another crossing. Eventually I went up with more than a hundred people on a rubber dinghy. We sailed for hours before an Italian ship saved us. I was full of gioia, we kneel to thank God; then we found that the ship was returning in Libya. There we were locked up in a detention center, the worst place in the world. Ten months later I was on a boat again. The first night there were high waves, four fell overboard, we managed to save two. I fell asleep hoping to die. Waking up, I saw people smiling next to me. Of the fishermen Tunisians they called i rescuedthe ship docked and NGOs gave us food, clothing and shelter. I worked to pay for another crossing. It was the sixth time; after three days at sea I came to Malta. I stayed in a center for six months and there I lost my mind; every night I asked Dio why why men how are we to deem ourselves enemies? Many people fleeing the war carry crosses similar to mine”.
There is also the drama of many boys of today in the meditation of the third station: “We young people want peace. But we often fall and the fall has many names: they throw us to the ground there lazinessfear, discouragement, and also the empty promises of an easy but dirty life, made up of greed e corruption. It is this that increases the spirals of the drug trafficking, of violence, addictions and the exploitation of people, while too many families continue to mourn the loss of their children; and the impunity of those who cheat, kidnap and kill has no end. How to get peace? Jesus, you fell under the cross, but then you got up, you took up the cross again and with it you gave us peace. You push us to take life in our hands, you push us to the courage of commitment, which in our language is called compromise. And it means saying no to so many compromisos, to the false compromises that kill peace. We are full of these compromises: we do not want violence, but we attack those who don’t think like us on social networks; we want a united society, but we don’t make an effort to understand who is next to us; worse, we neglect those who need us. Lord, put in our hearts the desire to raise someone who is down. As you do with us”.
The Pope will conclude the way of the cross with a titled prayer 14 thanks: “Lord Jesus, eternal Word of the Father, you made yourself for us silence. And in the silence that guides us to your tomb there is still one word we want to say to you as we think back on the journey of the Via Crucis traveled with you: thank you! Thank you Lord Jesus, for the meekness that confuses arrogance. Thank you for the courage with which you embraced the cross. Thank you for the peace that flows from your wounds. Thank you, for giving us as our own Madre your saint Madre. Thank you, for the love shown in the face of betrayal. Thank you for turning tears into smiles. Thank you, for loving everyone without excluding anyone. Thank you for the hope you instill in the hour of trial. Thank you for the mercy that heals misery. Thank you, for stripping yourself of everything to enrich us. Thank you for turning the cross into a tree of life. Thank you for the pardon you offered your killers. Thank you for defeating death. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the light you lit in our nights and by reconciling all divisions you made us all brothers, children of the same Father who is in heaven”.
Twitter: @FrancescoGrana