Palm Sunday celebrations mark the start of Holy Week

With incense, prayer and palms, parishioners and clergy at Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia joined Christians throughout the world Sunday in celebrating the start of the holiest week on the Christian calendar. Palm Sunday, the last Sunday of Lent, commemorates the triumphant arrival of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem just days before he was crucified on a cross, later to rise again. Next Sunday, Easter, celebrates that resurrection.

Outside the Cathedral Basilica at 18th and Race Streets Sunday, the Rev. Gerald Dennis Gill conducted prayers before leading a procession of palms into the church for the 11 a.m. Mass.

In an eco-friendly gesture, St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia's Society Hill commemorated Palm Sunday without palms, instead using dried stalks of locally grown ornamental grass, commonly called Japanese or Chinese Silver grass.

At the Vatican Sunday, Pope Francis led a procession, walking with braided palm fronds and olive branches, before meeting with the faithful in St. Peter's Square. In his Palm Sunday address, he urged young people to raise their voices and be heard even when older people try to silence them and "make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive."

It was a particularly resonant message after the powerful youth-led March for Our Lives demonstrations against gun violence held Saturday across the United States and world.