Pope asks married couple to compose Way of the Cross meditations

(March 16, 2012) Pope Benedict XVI has asked an Italian married couple to write the meditations for his Good Friday’s Way of the Cross service at Rome's Colosseum on April 6. The Vatican announced on Thursday that the Pope has asked Danilo and Annamaria Zanzucchi to write the meditations, which will be read over loudspeakers as a cross is carried through and around the Colosseum on Good Friday. The theme of the meditations will be the family as the Way of the Cross winds its way through the 14 Stations commemorating Christ’s last moments when he carries His cross to Calvary. The Zanzucchis are the founders of the New Families Movement, which is a branch of the Focolare Movement of late Chiara Lubich. The husband and wife launched their movement in 1967 to strengthen families and encourage their spiritual growth and social commitment. The New Families Movement claims some 300,000 members around the world.
In 1985, Blessed John Paul II began asking people to compose meditations for his Good Friday Way of the Croiss service rather than using traditional texts. Over the years, he asked bishops and theologians, priests and religious women and - in 2002 - an international group of journalists who were covering the Vatican. The 2005 meditations, used just a few days before Blessed John Paul's death, were written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. Danilo and Annamaria Zanzucchi are the first married couple entrusted with the task.