Fragile Pope Presides Over Shortened Good Friday Rites

Pope John Paul II, forced by age and ailment to curtail his Good Friday services for the first time in 22 years, said that Christ’s message was as valid at the start of the third millennium as it was 2,000 years ago.

The pope, who looked pensive and at times fragile, made his comments at the end of a traditional candle-lit Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) service at Rome’s Colosseum on the day Christians commemorate Christ’s arrest, trial and crucifixion.

The Pope did not read the speech that had been prepared for him and distributed to reporters, but instead chose to offer a short personal reflection on the crucifixion.

“With this Via Crucis here in Rome and around the world, we are proclaiming this truth for the first time in this millennium,” he said.

“We want to carry this truth about the divinity and humanity of Christ forward into the third millennium.”

Speaking on Rome’s Palatine hill in front of a huge cross lit with candles, the pope urged Christians to contemplate the face of Jesus in their search for meaning in life in a service televised live to hundreds of millions of people in 28 countries.

The Polish pontiff did not walk around the inside of the 2,000-year-old arena as he has in past years, but presided over most of the ceremony kneeling, praying intensely as other people carried the cross.

The pope, who turns 81 next month, has walked with difficulty and has sometimes needed a cane since he broke his leg in 1994 and underwent bone-replacement surgery. Until then, he had carried the cross around the Colosseum and its ruins at the service each year.

On Friday, he walked and carried the cross only a few yards during the last part of the service.