‘For weeks now it has been evening…’

Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?: The World Facing the Pandemic. The Statio Orbis of March 27, 2020

by Pope Francis (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, €17.25; available through Knock Shrine Online Store)

“For weeks now it has been evening. Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice it in people’s gestures, their glances give them away.”

These are the words of Pope Francis on the pandemic, written well over a year ago. But now, as the feeling rises that the pandemic may be moving to a close and our spirits rise, we should recall them as part of the permanent lessons to be learned about the moral nature of the whole global experience.

Service

That singular Good Friday service by Pope Francis back in March 2020, at the now seemingly far distant early days of Covid-19, was a most memorable event, one which was felt to be deeply moving by people of all cultures.

The image of the Pope, all in white, alone in the bleak grey loneliness of St Peter’s Square, was strangely symbolic of the status of the individual in such a crisis.

This volume is a record of the ceremonies, containing the Pope’s own words as well as texts, prayers and comments by others. The impactful photographs capture the mood of the moment and are for once a real part of the book’s overall impact.

Many will want to have this publication, not merely as a record of that most memorable event, but because the homily and the other texts give a concise epitome of Pope Francis’ thinking on the state of the world today, and how it bears down upon creation of which we are all a part, and for the preservation of which we must all work together. In the Pope’s words are important lessons that should not be forgotten.