POPE FRANCIS wished a crowd in St Peter’s Square “Happy Easter” on Sunday, in what was to be his last public appearance before his death on Monday morning.
The Pope spoke briefly from a balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, greeting those that had gathered, before his Easter address was read out on his behalf.
“Brothers and sisters, that is the best hope of our life: we will live this poor, fragile and wounded existence clinging to Christ, because he has conquered death, he conquers our darkness and he’ll conquer the shadows of the world, to make us live with him in joy, endlessly,” the address said.
“Christ is present all over the place, he dwells amongst us, he hides himself and divulges himself even today within the sisters and brothers we meet along the best way, in probably the most abnormal and unpredictable situations of our lives.
“He is alive and is with us at all times, shedding the tears of those who are suffering and adding to the fantastic thing about life through the small acts of affection carried out by each of us.
“Sisters, brothers, within the wonder of the Easter faith, carrying in our hearts every expectation of peace and liberation, we will say: with You, O Lord, every thing is recent. With you, every thing begins again.”
The Pope called for an instantaneous ceasefire in Gaza, and the discharge of all hostages. He also prayed for the broader Middle East, including for Christian communities in Lebanon and Syria, and for “constructive dialogue” to search out an answer to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
The Pope also prayed for peace in Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Myanmar, and across the continent of Africa.
Preaching an Easter sermon in York Minster, the Archbishop of York recounted his experience of walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain. A person whom he had met on the road, and who had been relying on the journey to search out a belief in God, had been disheartened when, on reaching Santiago de Compostela, he didn’t feel any different.
“I discovered myself saying that the God I knew and worshiped, the God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, the one who in his dying on the cross had shared in and plumbed the depths of what it’s to be human, including the very particular human horror of death itself, and the one whom God had raised from the dead, isn’t to be present in, or restricted to, or especially present, in a single place,” he said.
“Or a minimum of not in a single place so rather more than another place. Or a minimum of not in anywhere that’s one step away from where you are actually, or for that matter tons of of miles away at the top of an extended pilgrimage.”
“God doesn’t live in Santiago. Or York Minster. Or Jerusalem,” he said. Instead, the message of Easter was that “Christ is here and may be present in surprising places.”
Concluding his sermon, Archbishop Cottrell spoke in regards to the need for peace on the earth, based on values “that come from Jesus Christ: values of trust and compassion which bind us, one to a different the world over and across barriers of difference”.
He listed places of conflict on the earth, reminiscent of the Middle East, Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and invoked Jesus’s call for Christians to be his presence on the earth: “Be the place where [Jesus] may be encountered, and make disciples, construct beautiful kingdoms of peace.”
