A viacrucis without pilgrims but very crowded today filled the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, which had remained almost deserted since the beginning of the pandemic and which lived a new atypical Good Friday although with a taste for normal precoronavirus.
Several hundred people gathered in the citadel, mostly local Palestinian faithful, religious from the Catholic communities of the Holy Land and international residents of the region.
Together they followed in the footsteps of the Calvary of Jesus, from the church of the Flagellation, which marks where Christ was condemned, to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, where tradition indicates that he was crucified, dead and buried.
The procession was led by a group of Franciscans, followed by hundreds of faithful who stopped at each of the fourteen stations of the Via Dolorosa, where they prayed in Italian, English and Spanish.
Behind them also advanced a large group of Palestinian faithful, who prayed in Arabic and were the ones who carried the two large wooden crosses.
Throughout the journey they were also accompanied by dozens of Israeli border guards, who facilitated their movement with multiple fences in the alleys of the Old City, located in the eastern part of Jerusalem, under Israeli occupation and annexation.
Behind these fences crowded Muslim residents of the citadel and dozens of Israeli tourists, who took advantage of the Jewish Easter holidays (Passover) to visit the Holy City and observe the ceremony, and who joined local Palestinian traders. , unaccustomed to the crowds after a year in which they suffered like few the absence of tourists.
From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic Israel vetoed the entry of tourists to prevent contagion, something that again deprived Jerusalem today of the thousands of pilgrims who arrive each year for these dates.
Despite this, the rapid Israeli vaccination campaign, which has already reached more than 50% of the population and has allowed the almost total reopening of the economy, explains today’s large influx, which contrasts with the gray ceremony last year, when only four Franciscans made the tour.
“I feel immensely grateful to God for the opportunity to have allowed me to be here in Jerusalem today, living one more year of the passion of Christ,” Angela, a Colombian resident in the city of Tel Aviv, told Efe.
“It is important because it is after this terrible pandemic that the world has had to live, that we can live a more spiritual moment, approach Him, and through this passion ask Him to please us. · Enlighten and help us get out of the pandemic, “he added.
Those unable to attend on this occasion were many Christian Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and the blocked Gaza Strip, following a reduction in the number of permits granted by Israel due to the pandemic, which in recent weeks has been recorded. peaks of contagion in both territories.
Unlike previous years, in which hundreds of Gazans and a few tens of thousands of West Bank residents flocked to the Holy City to celebrate Easter, this time there were no Christians from the coastal enclave and they were only 5,000 Palestinians joined from across the wall to local community celebrations.
“It is true that this Holy Week is special, because there are no pilgrims, because there is nothing, but the local Christians, the continuators of Jesus’ time in this Holy Land, are the ones who are supporting our faith,” Father Manolo Lama, 60, a native of Seville and a resident of the West Bank city of Beit Sahur, told Efe.
Liturgies will continue tonight in Jerusalem, including the funeral ceremony of Christ in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, prior to the Sabbath of Glory and Resurrection Sunday ceremonies.