Franciscan Father Francesco Patton wrote the meditations for tonight's Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome with Pope Leo XIV. Fr Patton served as Custos of the Holy Land from 2016 to 2025.
On April 1, he told VaticanNews.va that the inspiration comes from "current reality" and that the meditations are meant to inspire political "change".
The Vatican press office published the text today. Traditionally a penitential and contemplative devotion, the Via Crucis is repurposed here as a vehicle for contemporary socio-political reflection.
The text shifts from the Passion of Christ to war, refugees, human trafficking, surveillance, deportation, the media, the economy, prisons, hostages, and crackdowns on protests. Notably absent, however, are abortion, euthanasia, and gender ideology.
One acclamation reads: "For migrants, the displaced, and refugees: Comfort us, O Mother."
In the first station, the meditation talks about political and economic power "to start or end a war… the power to use the economy to oppress people or to liberate them from misery".
Station V is based on the erroneous idea of anonymous Christians. It discusses volunteers who help those in need of food, education, medical care, and justice. "Many of them do not even believe in Christ, and yet — even unknowingly — they help him carry the cross."
Station VII claims that Christ falls to lift up those "crushed to the ground by injustice, falsehood, every form of exploitation and violence, and the misery produced by an economy that seeks individual profit rather than the common good."
Station VIII describes the presence of women "in hospitals and nursing homes, in communities dedicated to care and providing shelter, in foster homes for the most vulnerable children, opening schools and clinics in the most remote mission lands, and tending to the wounded and comforting survivors in war zones and areas of conflict." It further states that children are "taken away and imprisoned during protests, deported by policies devoid of compassion, shipwrecked on desperate journeys of hope, killed in war zones, and wiped out in death camps."
While the stations mention Christ’s cross as redemption from sin, they interpret sin immanently. "In bearing its heavy burden, you knew that you were relieving us of the weight of evil that oppresses us, taking upon yourself the burden of sin that ruins our existence."
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