The blessing followed the procession of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, and laypeople carrying palm fronds, olive branches, and the large weaved palms called “parmureli” to commemorate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Pope Francis has not led the procession since 2019.
For the start of Mass, the pope was again driven in the popemobile from the obelisk to the altar in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Palm Sunday, also called Passion Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which will lead in to the sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, and concludes with the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection beginning at the Easter Vigil.
On Palm Sunday, the Mass includes the reading of the Lord’s Passion from the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his homily on April 2, Pope Francis focused on a line from the Gospel and repeated in the Psalm — Jesus’ cry of abandonment to the Father — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
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“‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ In the Bible, the word ‘forsake’ is powerful,” the pope said.
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis' Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
He noted how one might feel forsaken “at moments of extreme pain: love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed; children who are rejected and aborted; situations of repudiation, the lot of widows and orphans; broken marriages, forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression; the solitude of sickness.”
“In a word, in the drastic severing of the bonds that unite us to others,” he said. “There [Jesus] tells us this word: abandonment. Christ brought all of this to the cross; upon his shoulders, he bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God.”
“But, why did it have to come to this? For us. There is no other answer: Us,” Francis underlined. “He became one of us to the very end, in order to be completely and definitively one with us.”
At the end of his homily, Pope Francis remained in silence for over two and a half minutes before the singing of the Creed.
Jesus, the pope said, “has endured the distance of abandonment in order to take up into his love every possible distance that we can feel. So that each of us might say: in my failings — each of you has fallen many times — and I can say in my failings, in my desolation, whenever I feel betrayed or I have betrayed someone, when I feel cast aside or I have cast aside others, or when I feel forsaken or have forsaken others, we can think that Jesus was abandoned, betrayed, cast aside.”
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis' Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
In our failures, we can remember that Jesus is at our side, Pope Francis said. “When I feel lost and confused, when I feel that I can’t go on, he is with me, he is there. In the thousand fits of ‘why...?’ and with many ‘whys’ unanswered, he is there.”
At the conclusion of Mass, Pope Francis led the Angelus, a traditional prayer honoring Mary.
In a brief message before the prayer, he invited Catholics to live Holy Week “as the tradition of God’s holy faithful people teaches us, that is, accompanying the Lord Jesus with faith and love.”
“Let us learn from our Mother, the Virgin Mary,” he said. “She followed her Son with the closeness of her heart; she was one soul with him and, although she did not understand everything, together with him she surrendered herself fully to the will of God the Father.”
“May Our Lady help us to be close to Jesus present in the suffering, discarded, abandoned people. May Our Lady take us by the hand to Jesus present in these people,” he said. “To all, happy journey toward Easter.”
From the popemobile, Pope Francis greeted those gathered in the square and in the adjoining thoroughfare after the Mass.
The full text of Pope Francis’ homily for Palm Sunday 2023 can be read here.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.