The Roman Station Church: Holy Cross in Jerusalem or Santa Croce in Gerusalemme ties the coming celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ to His Saving Passion and Death and Resurrection.
The Basilica of The Holy Cross in Jerusalem is located in Rome, in the Esquiline quarter, close to the Aurelian Walls and the Castrense Amphitheatre, between the Basilica of St. John Lateran and Porta Maggiore. The Basilica of the Holy Cross is part of the route of the “Seven Churches” that ancient pilgrims visited on foot.
The Esquiline at the time of the Emperor Augustus was a peripheral and residential area; it was chosen by the Severan Emperors in the third century. A.D. to build the imperial residence which included a palace, a Circus (Circo Variano) and the Castrense Amphitheatre, later included in the Aurelian Walls, built between 271 and 275 AD.
The Emperor Constantine restored the complex and gave it the name “Sessorium”; in the year 324, when Constantine moved the capital of the Empire to Constantinople, the residence remained property of his mother Helen and underwent many changes, the most important was the transformation of part of the residential complex in a chapel designed to contain the relics of the Cross found by the Empress on Mount Calvary. This chapel became the nucleus of the Basilica of the Holy Cross, originally called the Basilica Eleniana or Sessoriana.
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St. Andrew Christmas Novena 👉
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