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Christians celebrate Easter, pope calls for Tibet solution
2008-03-23
From the streets of Caracas to a rain-soaked Saint Peter's Square, Christians around the world celebrated Easter Sunday amid messages of renewal, peace and hope. At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI called for "solutions that will safeguard peace and the common good" in Tibet, the Middle East and Africa during his traditional Easter message. Tens of thousands of pilgrims turned out to hear the "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message, sheltering from the pelting rain under a sea of umbrellas in the flower-bedecked Saint Peter's Square. "How can we fail to remember certain African regions, such as Darfur and Somalia, the tormented Middle East, especially the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon, and finally Tibet, all of whom I encourage to seek solutions that will safeguard peace and the common good," said the Roman Catholic pontiff. In Britain, the leader of the world's Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, warned that "comforts and luxuries" would eventually run out, and that civilisation in its current form would collapse. "We as individuals can't contemplate an end to our acquiring, and we as a culture can't imagine that this civilisation, like all others, will collapse and that what we take for granted about our comforts and luxuries simply can't be sustained indefinitely," he said. As the faithful marked the resurrection of Jesus Christ after his crucifixion on Good Friday, worshippers found ways to celebrate this holiest date in the Christian calendar in even the most difficult circumstances. In Jerusalem, Christian pilgrims from around the world flocked to celebrate Easter in Jerusalem's Old City where many believe Jesus to have been resurrected after his crucifixion. "It's great to be here where it happened," Manuella Anduku of the Philippines told AFP as she attended a chaotic service inside one of Christianity's most revered sites. "It seems more real." In Venezuela, Holy Week celebrations conclude with a political twist each year with the "Burning of Judas," in which unpopular politicians are hung and burned in effigy. This year Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was torched in the central Caracas neighorhood of San Agustin. Colombia and Venezuela almost went to war in early March, and Uribe and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have long had a testy relationship. An effigy representing oil giant ExxonMobil -- engaged in a legal battle with Venezuela over oil assets -- met a similar fate in the western Carcas neighborhood of 'El Cementerio.' In China, the Tibetan Catholic Church in Cizhong, a Christian enclave on the threshold of the Himalayas, saw its Easter services curbed after anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa caused the region's deadliest tensions in two decades. As a result, the tiny community of less than 1,000 souls -- snuggled amid picturesque mountains in an overwhelmingly Buddhist area -- has been affected by the recent unrest where it matters the most for them: religion. In Australia, Anglican Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, focused on the environment. "We've had the longest drought on record really oppressing communities in Australia, and yet just recently in many places we've received long-awaited rain," he said. In Seoul, some 20,000 Christians held a non-denominational Easter service in front of city hall, raising money for victims of an oil spill last December. Throughout Germany, thousands of pacifists took part in some 90 Easter weekend demonstrations that included a bicycle ride demanding German troops pull out of Afghanistan. In Afghanistan itself, Canadian soldiers deployed through NATO received chocolate Easter eggs, although no chaplain was available to hold a mass at their base camp. In Russia, Catholics -- a minority in the mainly Orthodox Christian country -- celebrated Easter at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Moscow. The Eastern Orthodox Church, which still uses the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar, holds its Easter on April 27.
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