MORE THAN 100,000 pilgrims filled St Peter’s Square in Rome yesterday to attend an Easter Sunday Mass during which Pope Benedict XVI called for solidarity with all those African immigrants rendered homeless by conflicts.
In his homily, given prior to his traditional, multilingual Easter Sunday Urbi Et Orbiblessing, the Pope also stigmatised armed conflict in Libya and Ivory Coast while highlighting the "pain and anguish" provoked by recent natural disasters, including the earthquake in Japan last month.
On a beautiful, sunny Easter Sunday morning, the Pope told pilgrims that just as the spring sun prompts growth, so too does Christ’s Resurrection “give strength and meaning to every human hope”.
He added: “The Easter ‘Alleluia’ still contrasts with the cries and laments that arise from so many painful situations: deprivation, hunger, disease, war, violence. Yet it was for this that Christ died and rose again.”
Speaking of the Middle East, the Pope urged that “the light of peace” might overcome “the darkness of division, hate and violence” in the land first “flooded by the light of the Risen One”.
In relation to Africa, he said: “In the current conflict in Libya, may diplomacy and dialogue take the place of arms and may those who suffer as a result of the conflict be given access to humanitarian aid.
“May help come from all sides to those fleeing conflict and to refugees from various African countries who have been obliged to leave all that is dear to them; may people of good will open their hearts to welcome them.”
Calling for “peaceful co-existence” among the peoples of Ivory Coast, the Pope also expressed sympathy and solidarity for all those countries, including Japan, which “in recent months have been tested by natural disasters which have sown pain and anguish”.
After the Mass, the 84-year-old Pope gave his traditional Urbi Et Orbi(To the City and to the World) blessing from his apartment window in the Apostolic Palace. Among more than 60 languages was the Irish Easter greeting: "Beannacht na Cásca daoibh go léir."
By comparison with 2010, when not only the Catholic Church itself but also the Easter ceremonies were marked by controversy linked to the clerical sex abuse pandemic, this year’s Easter ceremonies passed off without incident.
Speaking during Friday’s Via Crucis at the Coliseum, however, the Pope did refer to the suffering inflicted on children, saying: “It is the hour of darkness . . . when an emptiness of sense and values nullifies the act of education and the disorder of the heart disfigures the ingenuousness of the youngest and the weakest.”
The Easter weekend had, of course, begun with a first-ever television chat show appearance by the Pope when, in a prerecorded interview on Italian state TV RAI, he answered seven questions about both the suffering of Christ on the cross and the overall question of pain and suffering.