Pope Francis in silent Good Friday prayer

Pope Francis sat in silent prayer during this year’s Good Friday procession, which was re-enacting Christ’s crucifixion, and recalled the wars and “violent fundamentalism” that are devastating the Middle East today.

The Good Friday procession at Rome’s Colosseum is one of the most dramatic rituals of Holy Week, when Christians commemorate the death and resurrection of Christ.

The 2,000-year-old amphitheatre is used as a backdrop for the ceremony because of the belief that Christians were martyred there in Roman times, even though there is no evidence of this.