LIVESTREAM: Celebration of the Passion of Christ with Pope Francis

Pope Francis presides on the mass in the celebration of the Passion of Christ.
Pope Francis presides on the mass in the celebration of the Passion of Christ.

Watch here the full coverage of the celebration of the Passion of the Lord by Pope Francis.

Livestream direct from St Peter’s Basilica, the Holy Father will preside over the Liturgy of the Word, the Adoration of the Cross, and the Communion Rite, starting at 5pm (Vatican time) of April 19, 2019.

On Friday, April 19th, the Church celebrates the Passion of the Lord, commemorating His crucifixion and death on Mount Calvary.

St. Peter’s Basilica – Celebration of the Passion of the Lord presided over by Pope Francis April 19, 2019.

Please refresh page to get English voice over:

While waiting for the live feed, we post here the previous mass and celebration of the Passion of the Lord of March 30, 2018.

Later, refresh this page to get the updated and live video which should start at 5 PM Rome time or 11 PM Manila time.

At 9.15 PM (Vatican time), he will participate in the “Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, at the Colosseum, at the end of which he will give a reflection and impart his Apostolic Blessing.

Watch the event as we will carry the livefeed, also. That will be 3:15 AM, Manila time, April 20, 2019.

Then below, the homily, courtesy of the Vatican media translated from Italian by Marsha Williamson:

Homily of Fr Cantalamessa for Good Friday – full text
Below, please find the full text of the homily preached by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Pontifical Household, for the Solemn Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord, in St Peter’s Basilica on Good Friday afternoon.

Sermon 2019, St. Peter’s Basilica

He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Is 53:3)

These are the prophetic words of Isaiah with which we begin the Liturgy of the Word today. The account of the passion that follows has given a name and a face to this mysterious man of sorrows who was despised and rejected by all men: the name and the face of Jesus of Nazareth. Today we want to contemplate the Crucified One specifically in his capacity as the prototype and representative of all the rejected, the disinherited, and the “discarded” of the earth, those from whom we turn aside our faces so as not to see them.


Jesus did not begin to be that man just at his passion. Throughout his life he was part of this group. He is born in a stable “because there was no place for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7). In presenting him in the temple, his parents offer “two turtledoves or two young pigeons,” the offering proscribed by the law for the poor who could not offer a lamb (see Lev 12:8). That was a genuine proof of poverty in Israel of that time. During his public life, he has nowhere to lay his head (see Mt 8:20): he is homeless.

Now we come to his passion. In the account there is a moment that we do not often focus on but that is extremely significant: Jesus in the praetorium of Pilate (see Mk 15:16-20). The soldiers had noticed a bramble bush in the adjacent open space; they gathered some thorny branches from it and pressed them into his head; to mock him they put a cloak on his shoulders that were still bloody from his scourging; his hands were bound with a rough rope; they placed a reed in his hands, an ironic symbol of his royalty. He is the prototype of handcuffed people, alone, at the mercy of soldiers and thugs who take out the rage and cruelty they stored up during their lives on the unfortunate poor. He was tortured!

“Ecce homo!” “Here is the man!” exclaims Pilate in presenting him shortly after to the people (Jn 19:5). These are words which, after Christ, can be said of the endless host of men and women who are vilified, reduced to being objects, deprived of all human dignity. The author Primo Levi titled the account of his life in the extermination camp in Auschwitz If This Is a Man. On the cross Jesus of Nazareth becomes the symbol of this part of humanity that is “humiliated and insulted.” One would want to exclaim, “You who are rejected, spurned, pariahs of the whole earth: the greatest man in history was one of you! Whatever nation, race, or religion you belong to, you have the right to claim him as yours.”


The African-American writer and theologian Howard Thurman—the man Martin Luther King considered his teacher and his inspiration for the non-violent struggle for human rights—wrote a book called Jesus and the Disinherited.”[1] In it he shows what the figure of Jesus represented for the slaves in the south, of whom he himself was a direct descendant. When the slaves were deprived of every right and completely abject, the words of the Gospel that the minister would repeat in their segregated worship —the only meeting they were allowed to have— would give the slaves back a sense of their dignity as children of God.

The majority of Negro Spirituals that still move the world today arose in this context.[2] At the time of public auction, slaves experienced the anguish of seeing wives separated from their husbands and children from their parents, being sold at times to different masters. It is easy to imagine the spirit with which they sang out in the sun or inside their huts, “Nobody knows the trouble I have seen. Nobody knows, but Jesus.”


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