US EditionPope Leo's Good Friday service offers prayer for deported children
Pope Leo led a Good Friday service at the Colosseum, praying for war orphans and victims of conflict, and warning world leaders their decisions will face divine judgment.
- On Friday, Pope Leo XIV led thousands of Catholics through the Via Crucis at Rome's Colosseum, carrying a wooden cross through all 14 stations of the Way of the Cross for the first time in decades a pope completed every station.
- The service featured spiritual meditations centered on social justice, reflecting Leo's emergence as an outspoken critic of the Iran war and his message on the moral weight of authority.
- Worshipers prayed for refugees, political prisoners, and "those who have died beneath the rubble" during conflicts, while also recognizing children "deported by policies devoid of compassion" in the candlelit procession.
- The Pope warned world leaders their decisions face divine judgment, stating "Every person in authority will have to answer to God for the way they exercise their power."
- Good Friday marks the second of four Catholic holidays leading to Easter Sunday, when the Pope will deliver a special blessing and message from the Basilica.
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Pope Leo warns world leaders will answer to God at Colosseum Good Friday service
ROME, April 4 — Pope Leo led a candle-lit service with thousands of Catholics inside Rome’s famed Colosseum yesterday evening that featured prayers for war orphans and deported immigrant children, and a warning to world leaders that their decisions will be judged by God one day.The pope, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the Iran war, listened as an evocative set of spiritual meditations was read aloud inside the ancient amphitheatre to …
El Universo
Proceso DigitalPope Leo XIV recovered this Good Friday the tradition of carrying the cross during all the stations of the viacrucis in the Colosseum, a gesture that was not seen since 1994, before thousands of faithful gathered around to witness one of the most eye-catching ceremonies of Holy Week in Rome.
Pope Leo's Good Friday service offers prayer for deported children
Pope Leo led a candle-lit service with thousands of Catholics inside Rome's famed Colosseum on Friday evening that featured prayers for war orphans and deported immigrant children, and a warning to world leaders that their decisions will be judged by God one day.
The Church's gaze is fixed on the faces known in our days of indifference and bullying; the voice rises to ask the Lord "a motherly heart to remain human" and the gift of tears "to weep over massacres and genocide." And it rises to admonish "who believes he has received unlimited authority" because "he will have to respond before God of his own way of exercising power," first of all that of "starting a war or ending it." In what at the Christian…
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