No Palm Sunday procession from the Garden of Olives. No Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday. The war unleashed by the United States and Israel against Iran is now leading to the official cancellation of the traditional Christian Holy Week rites celebrated in Jerusalem, the Holy City where Christ was killed, died, and rose again. “Due to the war,” writes Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, “this year we were unable to experience the traditional Lenten journey in Jerusalem, with the solemn celebrations at the Holy Sepulcher and in the Holy Places of the Passion.”
