The largest Stations of the Cross in the world

These are really something:  the Stations of the Cross, in Rome.  Below, a shot of their installation, from Catholic News Service.

Details, and the story behind them, from Zenit:

This week, the grand avenue of the Vatican is taking on another guise, the Via Crucis. Fourteen life-size stations line the wide sidewalk of the Via della Conciliazione. Cast in bronze, using the same lost-wax technique of Brunelleschi and Donatello, they comprise 49 statues and 11 crosses, and are the largest stations of the cross in the world.

The sculptors, Pasquale Nava and Giuseppe Allamprese, have been working on the project since 2002, using in all 22,000 pounds of bronze for the figures and crosses. The sculptures were cast and modeled in the vast atelier of Domus Dei, owned by the Congregation of the Pie Discepole del Divin Maestro, which produces art and liturgical objects for churches.

The Via Crucis was commissioned for the city of Coquimbo in Chile by the “Fundacion Cruz del III Milenio.” The foundation was formed after Pope John Paul II’s 1987 visit to Chile to reap the fruits of the papal encounter. In 1998, the foundation began the project to construct a 280-foot cross above the city, and these majestic stations, after their Lenten sojourn in Rome, will also adorn the streets of Coquimbo.

Benedict XVI blessed the first station after the general audience of March 1. But Sister Rosalia Rossetti, president of Domus Dei, together with the the board of directors, went on to seek the permission of the Roman mayor, Gianni Alemanno, to display the works on Via della Conciliazione, which is under the jurisdiction of the city of Rome. This secular “blessing” was swift in coming and lacking in the polemics, atheist outrage and other tantrums we are accustomed to in the Anglophone world.

The stations will be inaugurated on Sunday, when Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, will offer a Lenten mediation at 11:30, before the noonday Angelus. They will remain in place for all of the Lenten season, until April 29.

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