Francis offers Easter prayers for darkest regions

In his Urbi and Orbi message, to Rome and the world, on Easter Sunday, Pope Francis linked the agonies experienced in the most conflict-ridden areas of the world with the Resurrection of Christ. “In Jesus, love has triumphed over hatred, mercy over sinfulness, goodness over evil, truth over falsehood, life over death,” Pope Francis told the 150,000 gathered in St Peter’s Square to celebrate the Resurrection, before praying for the hungry and the vulnerable, especially children, women, and the elderly.

He prayed for those suffering in the Ebola outbreaks in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, before asking that Christ comfort all the kidnapped and their families. The 190 schoolgirls kidnapped in Holy Week in northern Nigeria and still held by Islamist terrorists were clearly among the victims he had in mind.
He prayed for peace in “beloved Syria”, Iraq and Venezuela, and for God to continue to sustain the hopes raised by the resumption of talks between Israelis and Palestinians. He is to visit the Holy Land next month.

He specifically begged for an end to the conflicts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, and to the “brutal terrorist attacks” in Nigeria, before noting that this year Eastern and Western Catholics celebrate Easter on the same day, and praying for peace initiatives in Ukraine.

A little earlier, in the 90-minute papal Mass in a sunny St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis continued an ancient Easter tradition, that fell out of use in the sixteenth century, but was brought back during the Jubilee Year 2000 by Pope John Paul II, whose canonisation along with that of Pope John XXIII takes place tomorrow.

In the rite of Peter, Witness of the Resurrection, traditionally referred to as the rite of the Icon of the Resurrexit, Christ the Redeemer, the icon is presented at the beginning of the liturgy. The Pope, as Successor of Peter, encounters the Risen Christ in the icon and becomes the “first witness”, before the whole Church, of the Lord’s Resurrection. In a gesture bridging East and West, the Gospels were chanted in both Latin and Greek.

At the Easter Vigil the night before, the Pope told the faithful in his homily that Jesus’ instruction to his Apostles, after his Resurrection, to “return to Galilee”, is in fact a call to re-read everything in the life of Christ “on the basis of the Cross and its victory. [It] means above all to return to that blazing light with which God’s grace touched me at the start of the journey.”

On Good Friday hundreds packed into St Peter’s Basilica for the celebration of the Passion of Our Lord. Pope Francis presided at the service, but the preacher of the papal household, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap. gave the homily (see below).

Immigrants, the unemployed, the sick, the elderly and prisoners were the focus of prayers at the Via Crucis or Way of the Cross service at Rome’s Colosseum on Good Friday evening, as thousands gathered in the darkness around the ancient amphitheatre. The cross emerged from the ruins marking the 14 stations of Christ’s final journey here on earth, carried between two burning candles by immigrants, prisoners, homeless, elderly, women, disabled, and former drug addicts.

From the Palatine Hill opposite the Colosseum, Pope Francis knelt in prayer as the meditations by Italian Archbishop Giancarlo Maria Bregantini were read. The archbishop from the southern Campobasso region has been a leader in the fight against organised crime. His reflections spoke of “all of those wrongs that have created the economic crisis and its grave social consequences: job insecurity, unemployment, an economy that rules rather than serves, financial speculation, suicide among business owners, corruption and usury”. The meditations also denounced the abuse of women and children, the loneliness of old people and torture.

As the cross came to a standstill before the Pope for the fourteenth station, the Pope spoke briefly to the thousands gathered below in flickering candlelight. “In the Cross we see the monstrosity of man, when we allow ourselves to be guided by evil; but we also see the immensity of God’s mercy who does not treat us according to our sins, but according to his mercy,” the Pope said.

On Holy Thursday, 17 April, at the centre of Santa Maria della Provvidenza, run by the Don Gnocchi foundation, the Pope washed the feet of 12 disabled people: eight men and four women between the ages of 16 and 86; there were nine Italians and three non-Italians, one of whom is Muslim.