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 who had gathered, before his Easter address was read out on his behalf.
“Brothers and sisters, this is the greatest hope of our life: we can live this poor, fragile and wounded existence clinging to Christ, because he has conquered death, he conquers our darkness and he will conquer the shadows of the world, to make us live with him in joy, forever,” the address said.
“Christ is present everywhere, he dwells among us, he hides himself and reveals himself even today in the sisters and brothers we meet along the way, in the most ordinary and unpredictable situations of our lives.
“He is alive and is with us always, shedding the tears of those who suffer and adding to the beauty of life through the small acts of love carried out by each of us.
“Sisters, brothers, in the wonder of the Easter faith, carrying in our hearts every expectation of peace and liberation, we can say: with You, O Lord, everything is new. With you, everything begins again.”
The Pope called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and the release of all hostages. He also prayed for the wider Middle East, including for Christian communities in Lebanon and Syria, and for “constructive dialogue” to find a solution 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 man whom he had met on the road, and who had been hoping on the journey to find a belief in God, had been disheartened when, on reaching Santiago de Compostela, he did not feel any different.
“I found 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 is 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 found in, or restricted to, or especially present, in one place,” he said.
“Or at least not in one place so much more than any other place. Or at least not in any place that is one step away from where you are now, or for that matter hundreds of miles away at the end of a long 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 can be found in surprising places.”
Concluding his sermon, Archbishop Cottrell spoke about the need for peace in the world, based on values “that come from Jesus Christ: values of trust and compassion which bind us, one to another across the world and across barriers of difference”.
He listed places of conflict in the world, such as the Middle East, Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and invoked Jesus’s call for Christians to be his presence in the world: “Be the place where [Jesus] can be encountered, and make disciples, build beautiful kingdoms of peace.”
