Mei Wen of Perth, Australia, touches an area of the Holy Stairs where Jesus is believed to have fallen, during restoration work at the Pontifical Sanctuary of the Holy Stairs in Rome March 15, 2019. Wen is one of the major donors who contributed to the restoration of the sanctuary. Pilgrims will have the opportunity to climb the bare marble stairs for at least a month after an April 11 unveiling of the renovated sanctuary. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — For the first time in 300 years, the marble steps of the Holy Stairs will be free from the thick wooden panels installed in 1723 to protect the stairs and left uncovered for the public.
For at least 40 days, people will be able to touch and climb the bare stones that, according to tradition, are the ones Jesus climbed when Pontius Pilate brought him before the crowd and handed him over to be crucified.
The soon-to-be cleaned steps and newly restored frescoed stairway will be unveiled April 11, the week before Holy Week, during a special blessing ceremony at the Sanctuary of the Holy Stairs. The marble steps were going to be left open to the public temporarily before the original and restored wooden panels would be put back on.
The decision was made during one of the final phases of the sanctuary’s restoration — a 20-year-long project overseen by the Vatican Museums and funded with the help of private donors, foundations and the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums.
Paolo Violini, the Vatican Museums’ head fresco restorer, and his team were so astonished and moved when they saw the degree to which the stone steps had been worn away, he felt this hidden testimony of faith had to be seen and experienced — even just temporarily — by today’s faithful.
“It’s an extraordinary occasion to touch the same steps as Jesus and witness the faith of all the other people who came before us,” the sanctuary’s rector, Passionist Father Francesco Guerra, told Catholic News Service March 15.
“And it is a concrete way to become linked with those who came before us in history and the faith, who passed on the faith to us,” he said.
Tradition holds that St. Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine, brought the stairs to Rome from Jerusalem in 326 A.D.
The sanctuary, whose walls and ceilings are covered with newly restored decorative paintings and frescoes depicting Christ’s passion and events of the Old Testament, was built specifically for the stairs to be venerated by the public in the late 1580s, by order of Pope Sixtus V.
Since then, millions of people climbed the steps on their knees, slowly and unintentionally digging deep undulating ruts and furrows into the soft stone. One of the 28 steps was so worn away by people’s shoe tips, a hole had been bored straight through the thick slab of stone.
That happened, Violini said, because that was the step where pilgrims lingered longer, to lean down and kiss “the most important step” above, which is cracked down the middle and adorned with a metal cross and a raised metal grate. According to tradition, Jesus fell at the 11th step, cracking it with his knee. The cross marks the point of impact, Violini said, and the open grate covers what was said to have been a spatter of his blood.
A worker stuck his finger through the grate to scoop out some debris and show just how much stone had been rubbed away by centuries of people touching the spot. A cross also marks another step at the top of the staircase, indicating where, tradition said, had been another drop of blood.
Up until now, people had only been able to see — not touch — these areas through small glass panels in the wooden treads.
A few steps were still being uncovered March 15. Two workers chipped away some pieces of brick along the staircase walls to free the rusty metal hooks securing the 300-year-old walnut wood treads in place.
