Pope Francis entered a torch-lit, but hauntingly empty Saint Peter’s Square for a Good Friday procession under a lockdown caused by a coronavirus that has claimed 100,000 lives worldwide. The Argentine-born pontiff walked up to his podium flanked by five prison inmates from the hard-hit northern Italian city of Padua and five Vatican doctors and nurses. Earlier, Francis had said that medics and priests who died after becoming infected while looking after COVID-19 victims “gave their lives out of love, like soldiers at the front”.
