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The text of the meditations

And while you're at it - some Holy Week-related stories and meditations from Vatican Radio, there for the downloading and listening.

A summary

We have accompanied Jesus on the Way of the Cross,” were his first, meaningful words addressed to a crowd of tens of thousands who followed the ritual with fervour.

A few hours earlier, during the adoration of the Cross in St Peter’s, stripped of the symbols of papal power, ring included, Benedict XVI showed his participation in the stripping of  Jesus by inviting everyone “to find our place” on the Way of the Cross.

In his first Via Crucis as Pope, Benedict XVI carried the cross in the first and last stations. The other ‘Cyrenians’ were, first,  Card. Camillo Ruini, the Pope’s Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, then a Roman family, a US Ukrainian Catholic seminarian, a religieuse, a young Mexican woman, two Franciscans from the Custody in the Holy Land, a young Korean woman from in Cheon, another religieuse, a young woman from Angola, and finally another young woman from Nigeria.