Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The prin­ci­ples of for­give­ness and love for oth­ers must be up­held ac­cord­ing to Mon­sign­or Chris­t­ian Pereira yes­ter­day as he ap­pealed to Ro­man Catholics to reach out to oth­ers as the Catholic Church moves to re­vi­talise its iden­ti­ty among youth. In his Good Fri­day mes­sage yes­ter­day dur­ing the an­nu­al Sta­tions of the Cross on the San Fer­nan­do Hill, Pereira said the last words of Je­sus Christ on for­give­ness should be a source of in­spi­ra­tion.

He said the mes­sage of the cru­ci­fix­ion is that just as Christ gave his life to save oth­ers, fol­low­ers of Christ must shoul­der the bur­dens of oth­ers. "The sins of the world are our sins. The sin we think is vis­i­ble in the lives of oth­ers as well as the sin in our own pri­vate lives must be erad­i­cat­ed be­cause there is no space for the Lamb (Je­sus) along­side our sins," he said.

The an­nu­al Good Fri­day re-en­act­ment start­ed around 6 am with David Joseph in the role of Je­sus car­ry­ing the cross up the San Fer­nan­do Hill lead­ing a pro­ces­sion of hun­dreds, some of them car­ry­ing can­dles. At the first sta­tion, wor­ship­pers prayed for an end to in­jus­tice.

By the time wor­ship­pers reached the last sta­tion at around 7.30 am, prayers had been of­fered in de­fence of the Church and for the rights of oth­ers to be pro­tect­ed.