ROME (AP) – He sat silently, alone in his chapel at the Vatican, his back to the camera, his face never shown.

The crowd in Rome’s Colosseum cheered and waved candles.

The ailing pope’s image on giant screens at the Way of the Cross procession was a picture of solitary suffering on Christianity’s most solemn day, which commemorates Christ’s suffering on the cross.

For the first time in his 26-year papacy, John Paul was physically absent from the Good Friday commemoration, the latest in a series of Holy Week events his own suffering forced him to skip.

Yet the fact that he watched the entire procession on television until its conclusion shortly before 11 p.m. heartened some of the faithful. Michael Caron, visiting Rome with his family from Chicago, said he “felt very grateful the pope had made this sacrifice for us.”

In a message read for him at the start, John Paul said he was spiritually among those at the Colosseum recalling Christ’s last hours.

“I also offer my suffering, so that God’s design is completed and his word walks among the people,” the message said. “I am near all those who in these moments are tested by suffering. I pray for each of them.”

The pope used to carry a lightweight wooden cross during the Colosseum procession, which symbolically traces Christ’s path to the Crucifixion. He stopped in 2001 because of his difficulty in walking, but he would observe the procession from a chair and offer prayers to the crowds.

Vatican TV installed giant television screens at the Colosseum, and on the plateau overlooking the Colosseum where the pope used to sit there was a torchlit cross.

John Paul was shown watching the procession on a television screen under the chapel altar. He was shown several times from his apartment, its lights brightly lit in an otherwise darkened St. Peter’s Square.

“We will miss him but we know he’s here, even if not physically,” said Cecilia Paolombo, a 20-year-old Italian Girl Scout who was giving out torches to the faithful at the Colosseum.

The pontiff’s physical suffering has been evident for years as he battled Parkinson’s disease and crippling hip and knee ailments. But it has worsened with the effects of breathing problems that prompted two hospitalizations and surgery to insert a tube in his throat last month.

John Paul has been absent for the major events of Holy Week, although he has appeared silently at his studio window twice this week.

“It’s very obvious that the pope is carrying a very heavy cross indeed, and he is giving a marvelous example of patience in the face of suffering, and of long suffering which in itself is a virtue,” a top Vatican official, U.S. Archbishop John Foley, told Vatican Radio on Friday.

The pope hasn’t spoken in public since shortly before he was released from the hospital March 13, and his only commitment during Holy Week is to deliver a blessing on Easter Sunday.

John Paul watched Holy Thursday services recalling the Last Supper of Christ on television from his Vatican apartment, and he relinquished another cherished tradition Friday morning when he didn’t hear the confessions of faithful in St. Peter’s Basilica.

U.S. Cardinal James Stafford stood in for John Paul for a Friday afternoon meditation service in the basilica. The preacher for the papal household, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, delivered the homily and ended with a prayer that the pope recover quickly.

“Come back soon, Holy Father,” he said. “Easter isn’t Easter without you.”

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, John Paul’s vicar for Rome, took the pope’s place carrying the cross at the beginning and end of Friday’s procession, while a nun, two Franciscan friars and lay people, including Albanian immigrants and a youth from Sudan, carried it at other stages.

Florida Kurera, a Sri Lankan lay woman who carried the cross at the ninth stage, said she thought about the pope as she made the procession “and felt he was close to me.”

John Paul’s close aide, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, composed this year’s meditations to be read aloud during each of the 14 stages of the procession. In them, Ratzinger denounces immorality, including “filth” in the Church, “even among those … in the priesthood,” a possible reference to the widespread sexual scandals among clergy.

Although the Vatican has taken pains to describe the ailing pontiff as solidly at the helm of the church, his failure for the first time in his papacy to preside at Holy Week events was a reminder to the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics of the limits imposed by his physical problems.

“What’s important in my mind is to see that the Church functions,” Paris Archbishop Andre Vingt-Trois said Friday. “Nothing has stopped” even if the pope takes a less visible role, he said.