VATICAN (CWN): On January 29 the Vatican announced that two young Lebanese people had been asked by Pope Benedict XVI to prepare the meditations for the annual way of the cross which is held each Good Friday at the Coliseum in Rome, Italy.

The Maronite Catholic Patriarch Bechara Rai was commissioned to supervise the preparation of the meditations, but the young people who will write the texts have not been publicly identified.

The Vatican Press Office said that the pope’s ambition is to ask “the whole Church to remember the Middle East, its problems and Christian communities in the land, in their prayers” on Good Friday.

During his visit to Lebanon in September last year, Pope Benedict was particularly moved by a meeting with young people outside the Maronite Patriarch’s headquarters.

Each year the pope chooses a new author for the meditations to be read at the way of the cross. Last year, he chose an Italian couple, Danilo and Anna Maria Zanzucchi, the founders of the New Families Movement.

With this year’s choice, he clearly wants to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East and especially the young Christians who are facing pressure to join many of their contemporaries, who have already migrated to other countries, especially Australia, Canada and the United States of America.