St Alphonsus Liguori During the Turkish occupation of the Holy Land in the late Middle Ages when pilgrims were prevented from visiting its sacred sites the custom arose of making replicas of those holy places where the faithful might come to pray One of the most popular of these devotions was the Stations of the Way of the Cross which were imitations of the stations or stopping places of prayer on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem By the late sixteenth century the fourteen stations as we know them today were erected in almost all Catholic churches Among the best known prayers for the Way of the Cross are those first published in Italian by St Alphonsus Liguori in 1761 which are presented here in a new revised translation In his brief introduction to this devotion St Alphonsus wrote The pious exercise of the Way of the Cross represents the sorrowful journey that Jesus Christ made with the cross on His shoulders to die on Calvary for the love