Pope Francis opens Catholics' Holy Week

CBS.news ^ | 03-24-13 | CBS Reporters

[Salvation]

Pope Francis opens Catholics' Holy Week 

The square overflowed with some 250,000 pilgrims, tourists and Romans eager to join the new pope at the start of solemn Holy Week ceremonies, which lead up to Easter, Christianity's most important day.

Keeping with his spontaneous style, the first pope from Latin America broke away several times from the text of his prepared homily to encourage the faithful to lead simple lives.

Palm Sunday recalls Jesus' entry into Jerusalem but its Gospel also recounts how he was betrayed by one of his apostles and ultimately sentenced to death on a cross.

Recalling the triumphant welcome into Jerusalem, Francis said Jesus "awakened so many hopes in the heart, above all among humble, simple, poor, forgotten people, those who don't matter in the eyes of the world."

Francis then told an off-the-cuff story from his childhood in Argentina. "My grandmother used to say, `children, burial shrouds don't have' pockets,'" the pope said, in a variation of `'you can't take it with you."

--snip--

Francis wore bright red robes over a white cassock as he presided over the Mass at an altar sheltered by a white canopy on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica.

--snip--

The faithful knelt on hard cobblestones paving the square, and Francis knelt on a wooden kneeler at the point in the Gospel that recounts the moment of Jesus' death.

[Salvation]

Leave it to CBS authors. Holy Week is for a lot more people than just Catholics!

Getty photo at the site cannot be posted on FR.

[Salvation]

Monday, March 25, 2013

LITURGICAL CELEBRATIONS TO BE PRESIDED OVER BY POPE FRANCIS DURING HOLY WEEK

Vatican City, 25 March 2013 (VIS) – The Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff has made public the calendar of celebrations at which Pope Francis is scheduled to preside during Holy Week:

28 March, Holy Thursday: 9:30am, Chrism Mass in the Vatican Basilica
             5:30pm, Mass of the Lord's Supper at the Casal del Marmo youth detention centre

29 March, Good Friday: 5:00pm, Celebration of the Lord's Passion in the Vatican Basilica
             9:15pm, Via Crucis at the Colosseum

30 March, Holy Saturday: 8:30, Easter Vigil in the Vatican Basilica

31 March, Easter Sunday: 10:15am, Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square
             12:00pm “Urbi et Orbi” Blessing

Catholic Ping!

[Salvation]

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