Dramatic photos show the pope delivering an 'extraordinary' prayer of hope to a hauntingly empty St. Peter's Square during Italy's coronavirus lockdown
The prayer, known officially as the "Urbi et Orbi" — meaning "From the city [of Rome] to the world — is usually delivered only twice a year, at Easter and Christmas.
Pope Francis, however, decided to deliver the address as a message of hope to Catholics around the world battling the coronavirus outbreak. The service was titled: "An Extraordinary Prayer in the Time of Pandemic."
During the address, Pope Francis read from a passage in the gospel of Matthew when Jesus and his disciples were struck by a sudden storm while sailing on the Sea of Galilee. In the gospel, Jesus implores: "Peace! Be still!" The storm subsides and the disciples are saved from death.
"Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm," Pope Francis said while standing under an awning in empty St. Peter's Square in the Vatican.
"We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other," he said.
The picture below illustrates the scale of the empty square, with the pope himself visible only as a small white dot in the center of the image.
With all of Italy, including Rome, on lockdown, and church services currently banned, the pope took the extraordinary step of giving an address without any physical audience.
In more normal times, such an address would likely have been attended by many thousands. The picture below shows Pope Francis delivering the Urbi et Orbi prayers on Easter 2019.
Although nobody but the pope and a single assistant was physically present at the service, millions watched on TV around the world. The image below shows the McClenahan family in Washington state watching the address.
Soon after the coronavirus outbreak spread to Europe, it was briefly feared that the pope himself had the disease after being seen coughing and blowing his nose during important services. It is, however, not believed that he has, or has had, the disease.
Source: TIME
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