RELIGIOUS MESSAGES:CHRISTIANS "must engage in public and political life and economic life in fostering a society where the lives and gifts of all can flourish and not just the privileged few," the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said. He has also strongly condemned those who support violence.
Speaking in the Pro-Cathedral yesterday, he said: “These advocates of violence, like those who condemned Jesus, feel somehow that they have in their hands the power to achieve their sordid plans definitively.”
He continued: “The message of Easter which we proclaim challenges – head on – those in our society who espouse political violence, criminal violence or the violence of corrupt exploitation. It challenges those who fall into the purposeless violence we sadly encounter on our streets.”
The new Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough Michael Jackson said that: “Easter is about transformation.” In a homily at Christ Church Cathedral yesterday he said: “The first thing such transformation might look like is that other people recognise features of Jesus Christ in our features and in our everyday life.
“The second is that we speak confidently and honestly about what has happened in history and about why it matters, as you and I listen to one another. This will become abundantly clear as the decade of anniversaries unfolds in both parts of Ireland in the decade ahead of us.
“The third is that it is abundantly clear that all we do has consequences here and hereafter.”
At the Easter Vigil Mass in the Cathedral of Saints Patrick and Felim in Cavan, retired Bishop of Kilmore Leo O’Reilly commended RTÉ and its Northern Editor Tommie Gorman for the programme Michaela - Finding Peace, broadcast last Wednesday night on RTÉ One television.
It dealt with the killing of Michaela McAreavey on her honeymoon in Mauritius last January.
