IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring

By Junno Arocho Esteves

ROME (CNS) -- Recalling Jesus' death on the cross, Pope Francis led thousands on Good Friday in reflecting on the crosses of loneliness, fear and betrayal that crucify countless men, women and children in the world.

In the annual Way of the Cross in Rome's Colosseum April 19, the meditation for each station reflected the suffering and pain of people exploited and marginalized.

At the 13th station, Jesus is taken down from the cross, the meditation recalled the funeral of 26 young Nigerian women who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.

"Their Calvary," it read, "was lengthy and difficult."

"Two of them were bearing in their womb the gift of a new life, children who would never see the light of day," the reflection read. "Yet their death, like that of Jesus taken down from the cross, was not in vain. We entrust all these lives to the mercy of God our father and the father of all, especially the poor, the desperate and the abased."

At each station, various people took turns carrying a large black cross and circling the famed Colosseum, which glowed a fiery orange from hundreds of candles placed around the ruins. Thousands of men, women and children standing outside also held lit candles as the sounds of prayers, reflections and music echoed throughout the hallowed site where many Christian executions took place in ancient Rome.

This year, the meditations for the late-night event were written by Consolata Sister Eugenia Bonetti, a missionary who ministers to sex workers along the roadsides of Italian cities, in police detention centers or in church-run safehouses, helping them get off the streets and rebuild their lives.

Sister Bonetti is a leader among women religious working against human trafficking. She started and led anti-trafficking initiatives for the Italian Union of Major Superiors and helped educate officials in Italy and the United States about the problem.

Many of the meditations reflected on the horrors of human trafficking witnessed by Sister Bonetti.

The prayer during the meditation of the sixth station -- Veronica wipes the face of Jesus -- asked God to "cleanse our eyes so that we can see your face in our brothers and sisters, especially in all those children who, in many parts of the world, are living in poverty and squalor."

"Let us think of all those children in various parts of the world who cannot go to school but are instead exploited in mines, fields and fisheries, bought and sold by human traffickers for organ harvesting, used and abused on our streets by many, including Christians, who have lost the sense of their own and others' sacredness," the meditation read.

At the end of the service, Pope Francis read a prayer he wrote, asking Jesus to help Christians today to "see in your cross all the crosses of the world."

He also prayed that Christians may see the cross of Christ in the church that, although faithful to the Gospel, "struggles to carry your love even among the baptized themselves" and is "continually attacked from within and from without."

In his prayer, which he read from a hillside overlooking a torch-lit cross and the crowds holding candles, the pope remembered the crosses of people "hungry for bread and love," especially those who are "lonely and abandoned even by their own children and relatives."

The pope also remembered the crosses borne by children "wounded in their innocence and purity," and who also "find themselves marginalized and discarded even by their families and their peers."

He also prayed for consecrated men and women who are "rejected, mocked and humiliated" for bring Christ's light into the world as well as those "who along the way have forgotten their first love."

Concluding his prayer, Pope Francis said, "Lord Jesus, rekindle in us the hope of the resurrection and of your definitive victory against all evil and all death."

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Follow Arocho on Twitter: @arochoju

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Copyright © 2019 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at [email protected]

IMAGE: CNS photo/Joanne Fox, The Catholic Globe

By Joanne Fox

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (CNS) -- Singer-songwriter Tatiana "Tajci" Cameron confessed she didn't always like Holy Week.

"It always seemed to be full of sadness," she told the crowd of more than 500 who gathered April 14 at St. Michael Church, part of Holy Cross Parish in Sioux City.

"Then, I saw how it was a beautiful connecting point between God and us," she said. "He was no longer the 'unapproachable' God, but the God who suffered and died for us."

The award-winning vocalist presented "I Thirst: The Crucifixion Story," on Palm Sunday, reinforcing the passion and death of Jesus evoked from the Gospel reading from Luke for that day.

Cameron, who performed at the foot of the sanctuary, turned and gestured toward the larger-than-life crucifix above the altar.

"When I look at the crucifix, I see myself suffering, too," she mused. "I realized it's OK to be afraid and ask, 'Why, God, did you abandon me?'"

By age 19, Cameron was a pop superstar in Croatia.

"Yes, my image was even made into a doll," she told The Catholic Globe, Sioux City's diocesan newspaper. "I had everything -- clothes, a chauffeured limousine -- yet I was empty."

A powerful encounter with God two years later compelled her to abruptly step away from her fame and embark on a spiritual journey that took her to the United States at age 21.

Despite her deep faith and powerful music ministry, Cameron struggled through years of depression, severe anxiety and panic attacks. Her healing came through years of contemplative prayer, inner work and action.

Soon after getting married in 1999, Cameron, along with her husband, Matthew, embarked on what turned into a 15-year tour of America, during which she performed more than 1,000 "I Do Believe" concerts.

"It was this deeper conversion that helped me through the most difficult time of my life," she said. "That was my husband's diagnosis of and eventual death from cancer in 2017."

Father David Hemann, Holy Cross' pastor, met Cameron in 2000.

"I started doing missions out in Alhambra, California, at the Carmelite Sisters in Orange County," he said. "Tajci and I ended up doing a few concerts together, and when I connected with her recently in Nashville, I invited her to perform at Holy Cross."

Father Hemann pointed out the concert was not a "social evening," but an evening of prayer.

"I have kept the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle," he said. "My prayer is that this evening deepens our relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, mending, healing and bringing wholeness to us."

The singer-songwriter interspersed the Crucifixion message with music, Scripture and insights about her life. Cameron's hands alternately glided over and pounded at the keyboard to evoke different responses to her vocals.

Her blond hair practically glowed in the semi-darkness of the church. The upper range of her vocal register was as strong as Celine Dion's, and her occasional vibrato suggested Patsy Cline. A particularly moving moment was when she sang a cappella to "O Sacred Head Surrounded."

"Jesus didn't die to change God's mind about us," she said. "Jesus died to change our minds about God, and the biggest sin we can commit is a refusal of accepting God's love."

Cameron stretched out her hands, like Christ on the cross, several times during the concert to emphasize songs or discernments on Scripture.

"My arms wide open like this feel best," she said. "When I do this, I am lifted up. It's Christ saying to me, 'I've got it. You are safe in my arms.'"

When she was in her late teens, a best friend brought her to church, and on her 21st birthday, Cameron discovered God was calling her to a different vocation.

"I told him I would go wherever he would lead me," she said.

"I felt something I had never felt before," Cameron said, then spread her arms wide open. "I experienced a love that loved me, and I wanted to live in that love."

Emotions overwhelmed the vocalist twice. She invited the audience to join her in "Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord?)" and ceased accompanying them on the final verse to wipe away tears. Cameron's soaring vocals on "You Raise Me Up" concluded with a few more tears from the vocalist.

"That's why I believe this journey (of life) is worth taking," she told the crowd. "I am excited, grateful and blessed to be here tonight."

Cameron lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her three sons. She volunteers with Better Decisions, mentoring female inmates at a state prison in Nashville. Cameron also serves as a board member of Nashville Peacemakers, an organization that works with at-risk youth in Nashville's low-income neighborhoods and as a presenter with EndSlaveryTN, which raises awareness of human trafficking while working toward preventing it and providing healing for those affected by it.

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Fox is managing editor of The Catholic Globe, newspaper of the Diocese of Sioux City.

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Copyright © 2019 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at [email protected]

IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring

By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The cross serves as a warning to the powerful and a message of hope for the poor and oppressed, said the preacher of the papal household.

With Christ's crucifixion, death and resurrection, "a total reversal of roles has taken place: The vanquished has become the victor; the one judged has become the judge," Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa said during an April 19 service commemorating Christ's death on the cross.

"The final word is not and never will be injustice and oppression. Jesus not only restored dignity to the disinherited of the world, he also gave them hope," he said.

Pope Francis presided over the Good Friday Liturgy of the Lord's Passion, which began with a silent, solemn procession down the central nave of St. Peter's Basilica. Two aides then helped the 82-year-old pope down onto his knees as he stretched himself prostrate on the floor before the main altar of the basilica, in silent prayer, in a sign of adoration and penance.

During the liturgy, the pope and thousands of faithful stood as three deacons and the Sistine Chapel Choir chanted the account of the Passion from the Gospel of St. John. As is customary, the papal household's preacher gave the homily.

Father Cantalamessa said the crucified Christ represents everyone who is despised and rejected; "the greatest man in history was one of you," he said, "the discarded of the earth, those from whom we turn aside our faces so as not to see them."

Jesus, who was bound, mocked and tortured by soldiers, is the epitome of all those who are handcuffed, "alone, at the mercy of soldiers and thugs, who take out the rage and cruelty they stored up during their lives on the unfortunate poor," the papal preacher said. On the cross, Jesus "becomes the symbol of this part of humanity that is humiliated and insulted."

In his teachings, Jesus "solemnly affirmed that whatever we did for the hungry, the naked, the incarcerated, the outcast, we did to him, and whatever we omitted doing for them, we omitted doing to him," he said.

This is the mandate the church has received -- "to stand with the poor and the weak, to be the voice for those who have no voice," Father Cantalamessa said.

All religions, in fact, must not only promote peace, they must not remain silent "in the face of the situation that is there for everyone to see. A few privileged people possess more goods than they could ever consume, while for entire centuries countless masses of poor people have lived without having a piece of bread or a sip of water to give their children," he said.

"No religion can remain indifferent to this, because the God of all the religions is not indifferent to all of this," he added.

The cross, therefore, also contains a message for those who are powerful and "comfortable in their role as 'victors,'" he said.

"It is a message, as always, of love and salvation, not of hate or vengeance," but it reminds them that they, too, are bound to the same fate of divine judgment in the end: "Whether weak or strong, defenseless or tyrannical, all are subjected to the same laws and to the same human limitations."

The cross, a sign of hope and a world redeemed from sin, also "warns against the worst evil for a human being, the illusion of omnipotence," he said.

Pope Francis was scheduled to speak briefly later that night at the end of the Stations of the Cross in Rome's Colosseum. The meditations on the stations were written by Consolata Sister Eugenia Bonetti, an Italian nun working against human trafficking and ministering to women and girls forced by their captors to become sex workers.

 

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