“We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.”
One year ago, on March 27, 2020, Pope Francis spoke these words in an empty St. Peter’s Square during a livestreamed, nighttime Urbi et Orbi blessing of the coronavirus-afflicted world.
As part of this blessing and its rare plenary indulgence, Francis conducted eucharistic adoration and benediction just inside the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica. He also walked outside in the rainy night to venerate the miraculous crucifix of the Church of San Marcello al Corso—the only religious image to survive a fire that gutted the church on May 23, 1519—that Vatican personnel had placed there for him.
This crucifix, last venerated by Pope St. John Paul II during the Day of Forgiveness in the Jubilee Year of 2000, normally appears in processions at the Vatican only around every 50 years.
Read the remainder of the full article at America Magazine: The Jesuit Review
