Holy Week

Crown of Thorns will return to Notre Dame Cathedral for Good Friday
- Apr 7, 2020
Nearly one year after a fire ravaged the famed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the city’s archbishop will briefly return to the cathedral its most prized relic, the Crown of Thorns, for veneration on Good Friday, the day in which Catholics commemorate Jesus’s suffering and death.

By Elise Ann Allen
Gomez: Churches may be closed, but ‘Lord’s heart remains’ open to all
- Apr 7, 2020
Disease and death have darkened the world this Lent and Holy Week, with our societies shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, but “we know that our Redeemer lives,” said the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

By Catholic News Service
Photographing Palm Sunday where the pope usually celebrates funerals
- Apr 6, 2020
Pope Francis celebrated a somber Palm Sunday Mass in a location he goes to most frequently for the funerals of deceased cardinals.

By Paul Haring

As Pope opens Holy Week under lockdown, debate swirls around Easter
- Apr 6, 2020
With Easter just days away, debate continues to swirl about how accessible churches and pastors should be on the holiest day on the Christian calendar – and, for that matter, whether Easter ought to be celebrated next Sunday at all.

By John L. Allen Jr.

Opening Holy Week under quarantine, Pope tells suffering, ‘You are not alone’
- Apr 5, 2020
On Palm Sunday Pope Francis began his livestreamed Holy Week liturgies telling the suffering that Jesus endured a painful death to ensure that are not alone, and that the current COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak is an opportunity to love and serve others, as he did.

By Elise Ann Allen
Virus alters Holy Week celebration worldwide, not the spirit
- Apr 4, 2020
For Pope Francis at the Vatican, and for Christians worldwide from churches large and small, this will be an Easter like none other: The joyous message of Christ’s resurrection will be delivered to empty pews.

By David Crary and Luis Andres Henao
English Church official: People ‘finding their own ways’ to unite to Easter
- Apr 4, 2020
As England prepares to celebrate Holy Week, the secretary of the bishops’ conference liturgy office says the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is making everyone “aware now that they are in this together.”

By Charles Collins
Prisons’ Passion: Via Crucis meditations reflect on aftermath of crime
- Apr 3, 2020
While Pope Francis’s Way of the Cross service on Good Friday has been transferred to the Vatican because of the coronavirus pandemic, the meditations focus, as always, on those who share the pain, suffering and heartbreak that characterized Christ’s passion and death.

By Junno Arocho Esteves