Christian Pilgrims Retrace Jesus’ Route to Crucifixion

Christian pilgrims shouldering wooden crosses made their way slowly through the narrow streets of Old Jerusalem today, Good Friday, retracing the steps of Jesus on the way to his crucifixion.

Five-thousand pilgrims followed the procession led by Franciscan monks along the Via Dolorosa, the Street of Sorrows, venerated since the Middle Ages as the route taken by Jesus after he was condemned to die.

The half-mile walk took the pilgrims from St. Anne’s Church, near the site where tradition says Jesus was judged, to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the 12th-Century sanctuary encompassing both Calvary and the tomb where his body was placed.

Stations of the Cross

The procession stopped at all 14 Stations of the Cross. Each marks an event chronicled in the Gospels or in early Christian tradition, including the three places where Jesus is said to have fallen under the weight of his cross.

At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II heard confessions of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Basilica, including those of a 13-year-old Michigan girl, then led the Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome.

The pontiff arrived in the Basilica wearing a white skullcap and a priest’s black robe over his white papal robes.

Smiling broadly, he made his way to a wooden confessional by the altar of St. Joseph, where about 1,000 pilgrims and tourists gathered to recount their sins or watch the proceedings, which the Pope inaugurated on Good Friday six years ago as a sign of humility.

Vatican security guards manned a barrier holding the throng back from the pontiff and apparently picked out willing pilgrims at random from among those who wished to confess.

In the Philippines, 17 people, including a convicted murderer and a Filipino hoping to meet his American father, were nailed to crosses in bloody re-enactments of Christ’s crucifixion.

Some of the penitents who volunteered to have their hands and feet nailed to crosses, which were then raised upright, grimaced in pain. Others seemed not to mind, and a few had second thoughts and backed out.

Thousands of others in Asia’s only Christian nation beat their bare backs with bamboo reeds, whips and glass-studded bats.