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100 000 celebrate 'true cross'
28/09/2007 15:34 - (SA)
Addis Ababa - More than 100 000 Ethiopian Orthodox Christians took part in a procession for the first major religious festival of the country's third millennium.
Ethiopia followed a unique version of the Julian and marked a new millennium on September 12, seven years after the rest of the world.
Ethiopians on Thursday converged on Meskel square in the capital's centre, in larger numbers than often before during a ceremony where they sang hymns and had beaten drums to commemorate what the faithful regarded as the finding of cross on which Jesus was crucified.
According to Ethiopian Christian tradition, Meskel - Amharic for cross - the festival celebrated the finding of the "true cross" by Saint Helena in Jerusalem in the 4th century AD.
She was believed to have found the hiding place, where three crosses used during Jesus' crucifixion and identified the holy one by a miracle.
The story had it that St Helena gave pieces of the cross to all Orthodox churches and Ethiopia's church claimed to still hold its own piece in a remote monastery.
- AFP
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