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“Of all the pious exercises connected with the veneration of the Cross, none is more popular among the faithful movingly follow the final earthly journey of Christ: from the Mount of Olives, where the Lord, “in a small estate called Gethsemane” (Mk 14, 32), was taken by anguish (cf. Lk 22, 44), to Calvary where he was crucified between two thieves (cf. Lk 23, 33), to the garden where he was placed in freshly hewn tomb (Jn 19, 40-42). The Via Crucis is a synthesis of various devotions that have arisen since the high middle ages: the pilgrimage to the Holy Land during which the faithful devoutly visit the places associated with the Lord’s Passion; devotion to the three falls of Christ under the weight of the Cross; devotion to “the dolorous journey of Christ” which consisted in processing from one Church to another in   memory of Christ’s Passion; devotion to the stations of Christ, those places where Christ stopped on his journey to Calvary because obligated to do so by his executioners or exhausted by fatigue, or because moved by compassion to dialogue with those who were present at his Passion.