c. 2000 Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY _ Some 500,000 pilgrims are expected to take part in this year’s Holy Week observances, a high point of Roman Catholic Jubilee 2000 celebrations presided over by an aging but determined Pope John Paul II.
Rome city officials estimated that 120,000 visitors from outside Italy and 230,000 from other parts of the country will join 150,000 Romans at the ceremonies dramatizing the events leading to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
Breaking with tradition, the pope will lead the Easter eve vigil outdoors on the broad steps of St. Peter’s Basilica this year rather than inside the church, which can accommodate only about 7,000 worshippers.
St. Peter’s Square, which can hold up to 225,000 people, was crowded with pilgrims, including 50,000 young people, for the Palm Sunday Mass (April 16) that opened Holy Week with the biblical account of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
John Paul began dedicating Palm Sunday to young people in 1984, but this year’s gathering of youths served as a prelude to special Holy Year celebrations expected to draw 1.5 million young people to Rome Aug. 15-20.
Greeting the youths in seven languages, the pope said, “I invite all of you to the World Youth Day that will take place in August.”
The worshippers entered the square through 35 newly installed electronic gates equipped with metal detectors. The tightened security served as a reminder of the near-fatal attack on John Paul by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca on May 13, 1981.
The pope, who credits the Madonna of Fatima with saving his life, will mark the anniversary of the shooting by making his third pilgrimage to the Portuguese shrine May 12-13. He will travel to Fatima six days before his 80th birthday.
John Paul, one of the longest serving pontiffs in church history, has refused to curtail his schedule although he suffer from Parkinson’s disease, a neurological condition that makes it difficult for him to move and to speak clearly.
Forty large terra cotta pots containing olive trees with thick, gnarled trucks decorated St. Peter’s Square. The trees came from the southern region of Apulia, a major producer of olive oil since the days of the Roman Empire.
Before the start of the Mass, a procession of hundreds of young men and women carried towering palm branches, also from Apulia, across the square to the altar for the pope’s blessing.
Issuing the Holy Week program, Bishop Piero Marini, master of pontifical liturgical celebrations, said the week celebrates “the mysteries of salvation: the work of human redemption and the perfect glorification of God carried out by Christ, especially in the last days of his life, by means of the paschal mystery. Dying he destroyed death and rising again he restored life to us.”
Holy Week opened less than a month after the pope’s March 20-26 pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In Jerusalem, John Paul celebrated Mass in the room where the Last Supper was believed to have taken place and in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher built on the traditional site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
On Thursday (April 20) morning, the pope will concelebrate the Mass of the Chrism with cardinals, bishops and priests as a sign of close communion among all the world’s priests. The chrism is the consecrated oil used for anointings at baptism, confirmation, the conferring of holy orders and the blessing of an altar.
The Mass of the Last Supper on Thursday evening will recall Jesus’ final meal with apostles at which he gave the first communion and created the priesthood. During the Mass, John Paul will wash the feet of 12 priests as a sign of charity.
The Vatican said those invited to the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica will be asked to contribute to a papal fund to help flood victims in Mozambique.
On Good Friday (April 21), the pope will preside at a Liturgy of the Word in St. Peter’s Basilica and later lead a dramatic candle-lit Way of the Cross procession around Rome’s ancient Colosseum to re-enact the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.
In recent years, John Paul has invited theologians to contribute a meditation to be read during the procession, but this year he wrote the meditation himself.
On Saturday evening, John Paul will conduct an Easter vigil in a dimly lit St. Peter’s Square, concelebrate the first Mass of Easter with all the cardinals present in Rome and baptize a group of adults into the Roman Catholic Church.
On Easter morning, the pope will return to the flower-banked altar to celebrate Mass and deliver Easter greetings and his “urbi et orbi” message, televised live worldwide, to the city of Rome and the world.
Easter Monday is a holiday in Italy, which the pope normally spends resting at his country residence at Castelgandolfo in the Alban hills south of Rome.
DEA END POLK
