VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis renewed his calls on Easter Sunday for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all Israeli hostages, in a speech focused on peace.
Francis presided over Mass in crowded St. Peter’s Square, then delivered his blessing and message “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The pope, aged 87, has experienced health problems in recent weeks which have forced him on several occasions to limit his public interventions and to renounce certain commitments, such as when he canceled his participation at the last minute at the Good Friday procession at the Colosseum in Rome.
However, he participated normally in the other events of Holy Week preceding Easter and appeared in relatively good shape during Sunday mass. Easter, the most important holiday in Christianity, commemorates for the faithful the day of the resurrection of Jesus.
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After the service, the pontiff climbed into his open-top popemobile to tour the square and the avenue linking the Vatican to the Tiber and greet the tens of thousands of people waiting to see him. According to the Vatican, around 60,000 people attended.
Francis has repeatedly deplored the deaths and destruction caused by the war in Gaza.
“I launch a new appeal for access to humanitarian aid to be guaranteed in Gaza, and I once again demand the rapid release of the hostages captured on October 7 and an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Gaza,” he said on Sunday.
“How much suffering we see in the eyes of children, children have forgotten to smile in these war zones. With their eyes, children ask us: ‘Why? Why all these deaths? Why all this destruction?’ War is always an absurdity and a defeat,” he added.
While the pope’s Easter message traditionally focuses on world affairs, he also touched on Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Haiti, Burma, Sudan, the Sahel regions and the Horn of Africa, Congo and Mozambique.
After asking Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi last year to mediate the repatriation of Ukrainian children from Russia and territories occupied by Moscow, Francis called for “a general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine “.
He also condemned human trafficking and prayed for “a path of hope” for those suffering from violence, hunger and the effects of climate change, as well as consolation for “victims of terrorism under all its forms.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, written by Frances Kerry, French version Benjamin Mallet)
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