Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion: 'Jesus transformed Crucifixion into salvation'
Pope Leo XIV presided over the solemn Good Friday Liturgy of the Lord's Passion at St. Peter's Basilica. The liturgy consisted of the Liturgy of the Word, the Adoration of the Cross, and the reception of Holy Communion. Fr. Roberto Pasolini delivered a homily emphasizing that Jesus transformed the Crucifixion into an act of ultimate love and obedience. The sermon highlighted that the Cross should be viewed as the culmination of Jesus's life and his commitment to listening to the Father.
4 days ago
Investigate Catholic doctrine on the cross as a model of nonviolence
The Catholic Church teaches that the Cross of Christ is not only the means of redemption, but also the divine model for how Christians should respond to evil: with love that refuses retaliation, seeks reconciliation, and—when necessary—endures injustice through non-violent martyrdom rather than violence. This nonviolence is not mere passivity; it is an active, costly way of “doing good” that breaks the cycle of hatred.
Sources: Pope Francis (World Day of Peace 2017), Pope Benedict XVI (Assisi prayer), Eph 2.
Pope Francis grounds Christian nonviolence directly in Jesus’ own actions leading to the Cross: even though Jesus lived in violent times, he taught that the real battlefield is the human heart, where evil intentions arise, and he instructed his followers to love enemies and refuse violence (e.g., “turn the other cheek,” and his command to Peter to put away the sword).
Crucially, Francis links this directly to the Cross itself: Jesus “walked that path to the very end, to the cross, whereby he became our peace and put an end to hostility.” That line is then explicitly developed in Scripture: Christ “has broken down the dividing wall… [and] reconciled both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”
So, for Catholic doctrine, the Cross is not only an outcome (“Jesus died”), but a revealed method: Christ conquers conflict by transforming the heart through self-giving love that culminates in peace.
Sources: Schumacher, Luke 23, 1 Peter 2, Francis.
A distinctive Catholic reading of the Cross is that it represents a decisive break from the “blood upon blood” logic of retaliation. One theologian (Schumacher) describes Christ’s Passion as the place where hatred and violence meet love: Christ alone—sinless—can “experience the whole destructive force of sin and death,” yet “every blow… remains without retaliation.”
This is not abstract. The Gospels place on Jesus’ lips a specific forgiveness even while he is suffering: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” That forgiveness is presented as the moment where vengeance is “replaced with pardon, hatred with love,” producing “a new beginning to human history.”
The pattern is then drawn for believers in 1 Peter: Christ “suffered unjustly… He committed no sin… When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” The reason this matters is not because suffering is good in itself, but because Christ shows how to respond to evil without reproducing evil.
In this sense, Catholic doctrine treats the Cross as a kind of “antivirus” to hatred: it shows that love can meet violence without escalating it.
Sources: Levering, 1 Peter 2, Benedict XVI, Francis.
Catholic teaching does not confuse nonviolence with weakness. Pope Benedict XVI explicitly teaches that Christians must not become “wolves among wolves,” and that Christ’s kingdom grows “not with might… with violence… but with the gift of self, with love carried to the extreme, even towards enemies.”
He then gives a Christ-centered interpretive key: “Jesus does not conquer the world with the force of arms, but with the force of the Cross.” That is why disciples must be prepared for “passion and martyrdom” and to “lose their own life” so that “goodness