Pope Leo XIV will preside over the traditional Ash Wednesday procession and Mass on Rome’s Aventine Hill, an important place of Christian veneration and pilgrimage for more than 1,500 years.
For the Dominican and Benedictine religious orders, whose communities have had a significant historical presence on the Aventine, the Holy Father’s Feb. 18 visit will be a special occasion to begin the Church’s liturgical season dedicated to prayer and fasting before Easter.
On the first day of the 40-day Lenten “Stations Churches” pilgrimage — formally instituted in the sixth century by Pope Gregory the Great and restored by Pope John XXIII in 1959 — the pope leads a penitential procession from the Benedictine church of Sant’Anselmo to the nearby Dominican Basilica of Santa Sabina.
“To walk with Pope Leo on this pilgrimage from the nearby Sant’Anselmo church will be a sign, a symbol, for all of us of the spiritual work that’s taking place in our hearts in Lent,” Santa Sabina resident Father Patrick Briscoe, OP, told EWTN News. “We’ll all be on pilgrimage together.”
This year, Pope Leo will preside over a short afternoon prayer service at the Benedictine monastery and then celebrate the Ash Wednesday Mass at Santa Sabina, a fourth-century basilica that was gifted to St. Dominic and the Order of Preachers in 1219 by Pope Honorius III.
“The pope himself imposes ashes on [the cardinals] during the Mass,” Briscoe added. “The cardinals stand in for the whole Church and they’re a sign of all of us joining and following the pope’s lead.”
As part of the Lenten tradition, the pope leads the procession through the main doors of Santa Sabina, which contains the oldest known artistic portrayal of Jesus Christ crucified.
“On the door we have a very important Christian symbol… It allows us to think of the meaning of Lent and to embrace the suffering of Christ,” Briscoe said.
“When we consider it from the historical perspective and the evolution of Christian understanding, we really didn’t know how to handle the cross,” he explained. “It took us a hundred years to depict it.”
“This says something to each of us entering into Lent — to discover anew what our sufferings mean and how to have them transformed by Christ’s own sacrifice,” he said.
Father Eusebius Martis, OSB, a sacramental theology professor who teaches at the Pontifical Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo, told EWTN News the Aventine is an ideal place for prayer and pilgrimage.
“It’s really an ideal spot because it’s quiet and it’s a little bit separated but not too far [from the city center],” he said.
According to Martis, nature on the Aventine has inspired artists and pilgrims alike throughout the centuries to contemplate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“The acanthus leaf is growing all across our property here at [Sant’Anselmo],” Martis said. “It dies and it lays against the ground … completely dead until the spring [when] it comes back to life.”
“In a couple of weeks, it will start putting up flowers, which represent a bloom around Easter time,” he said.
Pointing out the reliefs of the acanthus leaf found on the Corinthian columns inside the Basilica of Sant’Anselmo, Martis said several churches across Rome purposefully depict the leaf to symbolize the Church’s belief in Jesus’ victory over sin and death.
“The architects wanted us to remember that, every time we’re at the altar, we are at Easter,” the Benedictine father said.
