VATICAN CITY — Praying in a desolately empty St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis on Friday likened the coronavirus pandemic to a storm laying bare illusions that people can be self-sufficient and instead leaves “all of us fragile and disoriented” and needing each other’s help and comfort.
Francis stood under a canopy erected on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica while leading a special prayer service as rain soaked the usually crowded cobblestone square. “Open our hearts to hope,” he said in his opening prayer.
“Lord, may you bless the world, give health to our bodies and comfort our hearts,” he prayed
At the end of the hour-long ceremony, he delivered a blessing that is traditionally reserved for the holy days of Christmas and Easter.
Wearing a simple white cassock, Francis climbed the sloping steps of the square by himself until he neared a canopied platform that had been erected to shelter him from the elements, taking the arm of an aide for the last steps.
Francis referred to the 17th-century colonnade that delineates St. Peter’s Square while praying, “From this colonnade that embraces Rome and the whole world, may God’s blessing come down upon you as a consoling embrace.”
He compared the viral outbreak plaguing Italy and much of the world to an “unexpected, turbulent storm.”
“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 now called to row together, each of us in need of comforting each other,” the pope said.
Before the pandemic, Francis said, people were rushing through life, “greedy for profit,” undisturbed by “wars and injustices” and not hearing the “cry of the poor or of our ailing planet. We carried on regardless, thinking we would stay healthy in a world that was sick.”
Then, moving to a temporary altar near the basilica’s entrance, he prayed silently and listened to a series of invocations, including one that said, “Save us, O Lord, from illness, epidemics and fear of one’s brother.”
Francis also kissed a wooden crucifix that was carried in religious processions in Rome during an early 16th-century plague.
The Vatican has said that the faithful could receive what’s known as a plenary indulgence — a lifting of temporal punishment — from sin with the special blessing, providing they meet other conditions, like going to confession or receiving Communion as soon as they can.
Helping the world carry on during the pandemic are those who Francis called the “ordinary people, often forgotten, who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines” or in fashion shows.
But these ordinary people “without any doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law-and-order forces, volunteers” as well as priests, nuns, and others, he said.
The prayer service was one of several scheduled over the next few weeks that will see the 83-year-old pontiff virtually solo in the square or celebrating Masses for Holy Week and Easter Sunday in the shelter of St. Peter’s Basilica instead of outdoors in the company of tens of thousands of faithful.
Earlier Friday, the Vatican announced that Francis will mark Holy Week ceremonies in the confines of Vatican City, including a Good Friday Way of the Cross service on the steps of the basilica, instead of at Rome’s Colosseum.
