Friday in Madrid – praying the Via Crucis

A last free day today. Kirill, Father Apolinary and Benny prepared a tour for us in old Madrid. During the tour, we went through many historic places and visited two amazing churches. We saw the National Museum of Spain and walked around a number of parks in the city. On our way, we met a number of groups and even talked to groups from Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

After the trip, we went by underground to meet the Riquinios, our friends from Santiago. While we were waiting for the Riquinios, we met the Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto in Italy, Bruno Forte, who is a member of the commission for dialogue between the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel and the Holy See. The bishop greeted us warmly. We met up with the Riquinios and went with them to the Taizé prayer. The prayer was the Via Crucis, the Friday tradition of the Catholic Church, held in communion with the Holy Father, who prayed this prayer with many youth at the same time. During the pray, we sang and had the opportunity to express our love for Jesus before an icon of Christ Crucified. During the prayer, Benny read a reading from the New Testament in Hebrew.

The prayer was very long and after it we went to walk around with the Riquinios. During our walk, we sat in a circle in a park and we gave each of the members of the Spanish group a bag of sweets and a personal letter as a sign of our gratitude. After a half an hour of farewells and hugs, we went to have dinner.

We returned home by underground. Tomorrow we will see the Pope : )