Pope picks Augustinian nun to write Good Friday meditations
By Sarah Delaney
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI chose an Augustinian nun to author the texts for this year's Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday, the Vatican announced March 25.
Mother Maria Rita Piccione, a contemplative nun who leads the Federation of Augustinian Nuns, wrote the texts that will be read at each of the 14 stations, the Vatican statement said.
Each year, the pope selects a different person to author the texts that mark the steps in the solemn, candlelight ceremony that begins at Rome's Colosseum and leads toward the nearby Forum and Palatine Hill.
Mother Piccione, who lives in the cloistered convent attached to the Four Crowned Saints church in Rome, is the third living woman to be chosen to write the meditations. The previous two were chosen by Pope John Paul: Mother Anna Maria Canopi of the Mater Ecclesiae Abbey in Isola San Guilio, Italy, wrote them in 1993, and Sister Minke de Vries, a nun in the Protestant community of Grandchamp, Switzerland, wrote the texts in 1995.
During the ceremony, the pope carries a cross and stops at the stations where a few chosen people read the texts.
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