Under tight security in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, tens of thousands of worshipers from around the world thronged to a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis on Easter Sunday.
The pope began the day with a post on Twitter: “Our faith is born on Easter morning: Jesus is alive! The experience is at the heart of the Christian message.” He thereafter delivered the papal blessing “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
On Saturday night, the pope celebrated an Easter Vigil service at St. Peter’s, where he baptized eight persons into the Roman Catholic faith, including a Nigerian migrant, John Ogah, called a hero in Italy for foiling a robbery.
In his message on Sunday, the pope called for peace in a world marked by war and conflict. He cited a need to end the “carnage” in “the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria”; urged “reconciliation” in the Middle East; and pressed for “the fruits of dialogue” to neutralize tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The pope also drew attention to the “hunger, endemic conflicts and terrorism” suffered by parts of Africa.
He also touched on the challenges in Venezuela, voicing hope that the country would “find a just, peaceful and humane way to surmount quickly the political and humanitarian crises that grip it.”
The pope said the message of the Resurrection offered hope in a world “marked by so many acts of injustice and violence.”
He added: “It bears fruits of hope and dignity where there are deprivation and exclusion, hunger and unemployment; where there are migrants and refugees, so often rejected by today’s culture of waste, and victims of the drug trade, human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery.”
At the Mass, Francis advised Catholics not to remain paralyzed in the face of injustice, and he challenged them to “break out” of their routines and to let God in.
At St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, the Anglican Archbishop Glenn Davies said the redemption of Easter offered hope of forgiveness to all who faced moral failure, including disgraced sportsmen.
“When we all look at our own selves, we recognize we’ve all been there, we’ve had our own failures,” Mr Davies said, according to Reuters.
“If it’s hard enough to confront and stand up to a press gallery and admit you’re wrong, what would it be like to stand before the living God and admit that you were wrong?”
