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		</div><p>Christians are commemorating Good Friday without the solemn church services or emotional processions of previous years in a world locked down by the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>The chanting of a small group of clerics inside Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre echoed faintly through the heavy wooden doors, as a few people stopped and kneeled outside to pray.</p>
<p>The centuries-old church, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead, is usually packed with pilgrims and tourists.</p>
<p>Later, three monks in brown robes and blue surgical masks prayed at the stations of the cross along the Via Dolorosa, the ancient route through the Old City where Jesus is believed to have carried the cross before his execution at the hands of the Romans. It runs past dozens of shops, cafes, restaurants and hostels, nearly all of which are closed.</p>
<p>In ordinary times, tens of thousands of pilgrims from around the world retrace Jesus’s steps in the Holy Week leading up to Easter. But this year, flights are grounded and religious sites in the Holy Land are closed as authorities try to prevent the spread of the virus.</p>
<p>James Joseph, a Christian pilgrim from Detroit, dubbed <em>“the Jesus guy”</em> because he wears robes and goes about barefoot, lives near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre year-round. On Friday morning he had the plaza outside to himself.</p>
<p>He said Good Friday has special meaning this year: <em>“The crucifixion is the saddest thing possible, and (Jesus) felt what we feel right now,”</em> he said. “But thanks be to God … He rose from the dead and changed the world on Easter.”</p>
<figure id="attachment_129310" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-129310" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-129310" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/PopeFrancisHandsJoined030818_large.jpg" alt="Pope Francis, Catholic Church, Gender Equality" width="600" height="325" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-129310" class="wp-caption-text">Pope Francis</figcaption></figure>
<p>In Rome, the torch-lit Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum is a highlight of Holy Week, drawing large crowds of pilgrims, tourists and locals. It has been cancelled this year, along with all other public gatherings in Italy, which is battling one of the worst outbreaks.</p>
<p>The virus has killed more than 18,000 people in Italy and over 95,000 worldwide, according to data gathered by Johns Hopkins University.</p>
<p>Instead of presiding over the Way of the Cross procession, Pope Francis will lead a Good Friday ceremony in St Peter’s Square without the public.</p>
<p>Ten people – five from the Vatican’s health office and five from a prison in Padua, in northern Italy, where infections are particularly widespread – will participate in the procession, which will circle several times around the obelisk in St Peter’s Square.</p>
<p>On display in the square will be a wooden crucifix, famed for being carried in a procession during the plague that ravaged Rome in the early 16th century.</p>
<p>Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, nearly destroyed by fire a year ago, is holding a special Good Friday ceremony in the charred, gutted interior of the medieval landmark.</p>
<p>But the event is closed to the public for two reasons: France’s strict virus confinement measures forbid religious or any other gatherings, and the cathedral remains too structurally unstable to let parishioners inside.</p>
<p><em>“We wanted to send a message of hope”</em> through the ceremony, Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit told reporters this week.</p>
<p><em>“The message of hope is especially important for our compatriots at a time when we are particularly affected by the coronavirus, which is sowing anguish and death,”</em> he said.</p>
<p>Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, nearly destroyed by fire a year ago, is holding a special Good Friday ceremony in the charred, gutted interior of the medieval landmark.</p>
<p>But the event is closed to the public for two reasons: France’s strict virus confinement measures forbid religious or any other gatherings, and the cathedral remains too structurally unstable to let parishioners inside.</p>
<p><em>“We wanted to send a message of hope”</em> through the ceremony, Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit told reporters this week.</p>
<p><em>“The message of hope is especially important for our compatriots at a time when we are particularly affected by the coronavirus, which is sowing anguish and death,”</em> he said.</p>
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