Churches that follow the Gregorian calendar today observed Good Friday procession in the occupied city of East Jerusalem. Hundreds of Palestinian Christians and pilgrims marched through the ancient stone alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City, retracing Jesus Christ’s path along the Via Dolorosa to his crucifixion in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The faithful marched slowly from the Monastery of the Flagellation, where Jesus was flogged, and continued down the cobblestone Via Dolorosa, Latin for ‘Way of the Suffering’, along which Jesus carried his cross, carrying wooden crosses on their shoulders and singing hymns. They stopped at the 14 stations on the circuitous route, marking the traditional sites of Jesus’s condemnation up to his crucifixion. The procession ended at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Latins, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, presided over the celebration of Christ’s passions. This came as Israeli occupation forces beefed up military deployments as the Holy Week for Western churches, Ramadan and Passover are being celebrated at the same time. This also came amidst soaring tensions over the occupation forces raids into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, assault and forcible removal of Muslim worshippers, and ongoing violent crackdown in the occupied West Bank, where the Israeli army has killed at least 94 Palestinians so far this year and following an alarming escalation of Israeli Jewish settler attacks against Christians and their property, particularly in Jerusalem. One such attack saw three extremist Jewish settlers storming the Church of the Condemnation, located at the Second Station of the Via Dolorosa, smashing a statute of the condemning Jesus and attempting to set the church on fire on February 2. Escalating settler attacks against Christian property has prompted the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem to call on Israel, the occupying power, In their annual Easter message to secure safety, access and religious freedom for Christians in the Holy Land during Easter. Palestinians in Jerusalem experience frequent violence from Jewish settlers and Israeli forces and both Christian and Muslim holy places come under attack. Palestinian parishioners of Western churches also observed Good Friday in the West Bank cities of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour and Jericho, while their counterparts in the other West Bank cities and villages would observe the feast with Orthodox faithful a week later according to the old Julian calendar.
Source: Palestine News & Information Agency (WAFA)