Every day, Aleteia offers a selection of articles written by the international press about the Church and the major issues that concern Catholics around the world. The opinions and views expressed in these articles are not those of the editors.
Thursday 14 April 2022
1- Victim and executioner together: the scandal of peace at the Via Crucis
2- Ukraine: a symptom of the defeat of Christianity, according to Andrea Riccardi
3- Holy Week in Iraq a sign that Christians are slowly returning to their homes
4- The world’s oldest Salesian dies in São Paulo
5- Archbishop of Canterbury backs removal of slave trader memorial at Jesus College, Cambridge University
1Victim and executioner together: the scandal of peace at the Via Crucis
Two women, Albina and Irina, one Russian, the other Ukrainian, will carry the cross on Good Friday at the Colosseum — an image that has caused scandal in recent days, but that Father Antonio Spadaro, Jesuit director of La Civiltà Cattolica and close to Pope Francis, defends. “This is not the first time that the aggressor and the aggressed have been immersed by Pope Francis in the same prayer,” he stresses, referring to the consecration of Ukraine and Russia to the immaculate heart of Mary on March 25. “The Argentine pontiff is not a politician, he is a pastor,” he insists. These “two friends that the war has labeled as enemies,” will not say “a single word.” “Not even a request for forgiveness, or anything like that. Nothing,” They will be content to be “under the cross to carry it, scandalously together,” continues Spadaro. For the Jesuit Father, this is “a prophetic sign in a time of thick darkness. It is terrible and scandalous, but this is what preaching the Gospel is all about.”
Il manifesto, Italian