Many continued to be set in old ways in the North, the Church of Ireland primate Archbishop Robin Eames said yesterday.
In his Easter sermon at St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, he continued: "Suspicion and division, sectarian attitudes and so-called peace-walls dominate in many areas of this province."
The problem was that "not all can identify with or accept the changes that are taking place. Too many feel they are victims of change. They do not feel they own change. Ownership of change removes suspicion and hatred."
The archbishop said that this Easter he was "particularly conscious of the needs of children and young people. Almost every day TV screens portray across the globe the anxious and often tearful faces of children caught up in war, ravaged by hunger, deprived of parents or homes - desperate faces of innocence.
"Nearer home, the number of cases of attacks on children is on the increase. On a global scale the most precious part of any community, its children, are victims in horrific ways of man's inhumanity to man," he said.
In his Easter sermon at Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral yesterday, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Walton Empey, spoke of his recent visit to Honduras and El Salvador.
"I am now in my 68th year and never in all those years have I endured such harrowing experiences," he said.
The underlying problem in so many countries was "unquestionably their debts", he said. "Paying back loans to the IMF and the World Bank means huge cutbacks in health and education in particular.
"What law governs those who lend?" he asked, before answering: "None, is the direct answer . . . It is the poor who bear the burden of having to endure the cutbacks in basic areas of their lives - they are the innocent ones who suffer and the injustice of it all cries out to heaven for a fair solution," he said.
In his Easter homily at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral yesterday, Cardinal Desmond Connell recalled how "many years ago I heard a young man on radio rejecting Christ in the words: 'I did not ask him to save me.'
"Taken at face value those words expressed his determination to be his own master in opposition to God. Such is the pride at the deepest root of sin, for God made us above all to love him. Not to love ourselves."
