Pope picks Augustinian nun to write Good Friday meditations
(March 28, 2011) Pope Benedict XVI has chosen an Augustinian nun to author the texts
for this year's Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday. Mother Maria Rita Piccione,
a contemplative nun who leads the Federation of Augustinian Nuns, has written the
texts that will be read at each of the 14 stations, the Vatican said last week. Each
year, the pope selects a different person to author the texts that mark the steps
in the solemn, candlelight ceremony that begins at the famous landmark of Rome, the
Colosseum. Mother Piccione, who lives in the cloistered convent attached to the Four
Crowned Saints church in Rome, is the third living woman to be chosen to write the
meditations. Pope John Paul II had asked Italian nun, Mother Anna Maria Canopi of
the Mater Ecclesiae Abbey to write the meditations in 1993, and two years later, he
had asked Swiss Protestant nun, Sister Minke de Vries, to write it. During the Way
of the Cross, the pope carries a cross and stops at the stations where a few chosen
people read the texts.