Youth re-enact Via Crucis in Saint Peter’s Square

(Vatican Radio) Every year on Good Friday, a group of young people re-enact the Stations of the Cross in Saint Peter’s Square. Onlookers watch as the re-enactors act out the stations, freezing in place as each as meditation is read aloud in English. The young people who put on these Stations of the Cross are Students of the Emmanuel School of Mission(ESM), a nine-month missionary program based in Rome.
ESM co-director Helen Wagner spoke with Vatican Radio’s Ann Schneible about this initiative.
“Saint Peter’s is the place of the heart of the Catholic Church,” she said. “Also, because it’s such a public place, it’s important for us that people are reminded of what Christ offered for us on Good Friday, so people can see it. It’s a visual aid, in a way, to be able to enter into the Triduum.”
She went on to explain how the students themselves receive a great deal from the experience of re-enacting the Via Crucis in Saint Peter’s Square. “While we’re preparing, it feels very much like acting,” she said. “But when it comes to Good Friday, and they know this is the one that people are watching, they always really enter into it.”
“Yes, it is a dramatization,” Wagner said, “but it’s also very prayerful, and it helps the students to… really be in prayer on this day.”
Listen to Ann Schneible’s full interview with Helen Wagner, co-director of the Emmanuel School of Mission: