The Stations of the Cross began on March 4 and will continue to be held on every Friday of the Lenten Season until April 8, always at 4 p.m. local time.
Newsroom – Vatican City (March 7, 2022, 11:15 AM, Gaudium Press) As a way to better celebrate the Season of Lent, St. Peter’s Basilica is proposing a spiritual exercise aimed at the faithful who visit during Lent: a meditated Way of the Cross among the naves of the main temple of the Catholic Church.
The Celebration will Continue until April
The celebration began on March 4 under the statue of Veronica, to the left of St. Peter’s baldachin, and will continue on every Friday of Lent until April 8, always at 4 pm local time.
In addition, thanks to a partnership between St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museums, the pictorial paintings of the “Passion of Christ” made by the Italian artist Gaetano Previati (1852-1920) will be exhibited for the first time to popular devotion inside a sacred temple. The artworks will remain on display in the Vatican Basilica until April 20.
“Passion of the Christ” restored and exhibited 120 years later
Through a statement, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti OFM Conv. Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of St. Peter’s in the Vatican, pointed out that this is the first time that the Via Crucis by Previati, an artist from Ferrara, Italy, has been exposed to popular devotion inside a sacred building. “Previati had made ‘the Passion’ to encourage people to pray through art we are happy that his intention, one hundred and twenty years after the work (1902), has found a suitable place in St. Peter’s,” Cardinal Gambetti pointed out.
Previati’s work has been restored in a precise and careful manner by the Vatican Museums, returning to its original splendor with vivid images and colors that narrate the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The sequence of paintings of the Via Crucis of Previati underscores the theme of the pain and Passion of Christ through the chromatic rhythm; the imposing, tragic and monumental figure of the Savior; and the luministic parabola that surrounds the succession of images from the first panel to the darkness of the last, in which the Passion of Christ is fulfilled. (EPC)
Compiled by Sarah Gangl
