Pope Deplores Violence in Easter Address to 200,000

Pope John Paul II closed the most solemn week of the Christian calendar Sunday with an outdoor Easter Mass for an estimated 200,000 sun-baked celebrants in St. Peter’s Square, decrying “the hurricane of violence” in the world and asking all nations “to eliminate the very root of war.”

Appearing robust after a busy week of ceremonies that commemorated Jesus’ final agony and death on the cross, the Pope conveyed Easter greetings in 45 languages and Passover greetings in Hebrew at the end of his annual “Urbi et Orbi”--to the city (Rome) and the world--message from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

The message, delivered in Italian, drew a parallel between the “mad imperialist ideology” that unleashed World War II and the wars and human rights abuses afflicting the world today.

The Pope recalled the “tens of millions of people massacred on the battlefronts, cities razed to the ground . . . other tens of millions decimated and destroyed in concentration camps . . . the Jewish people condemned to extermination and, at the end, the terrifying revelation of the first atomic explosions.”

But while praising the pledges of peace that the horrors of World War II inspired, John Paul asked, “Has peace, as the result of a just order, been truly affirmed?”

In answer, he recited a list of human problems.

“There are still too many places on the map of the world where human rights are denied or violated under the form of the most stringent oppression,” he said, “where places of torture, segregation camps and camps of inhuman labor continue to reap innumerable victims. . . .”

There are too many places, he said, “where millions of children and adults are left to die because of want, drought and malnutrition . . . where ideologies that instil hatred, violence and aggression do not cease to deceive or poison societies.”

And there are also too many places, he said, “where the armaments race increases the threat of total destruction” and “where numerous wars continue to sow ruin.”

Richly robed in white silk with gold embroidery and wearing a heavy gold and white miter, the pontiff asked the worshipers to seek solutions to the world’s ills through “the message of peace which comes from Christ.”

The worshipers who all but filled the vast square were mostly Italians, but the multitude included thousands of the estimated 1.5 million tourists who have streamed into Italy for the Easter holidays.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, hundreds of Christians gathered for Easter services at the places where Jesus lived and died. More than 1,000 Roman Catholics attended Easter services at the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the site where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus rose from the dead.

Half a mile away at the Garden Tomb, Protestant services were held after dawn, consecutively in English, German, Swedish, Finnish and Dutch, with about 1,500 attending the English services.

Eastern Rite churches, which follow a different religious calendar, celebrated their Palm Sunday with a march down the Mount of Olives. The Eastern Rite churches celebrate Easter next Sunday.

At least 50,000 pilgrims came to the Holy Land this year. But most of Jerusalem’s 428,000 residents were observing another holiday--the weeklong Jewish Passover, which commemorates the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt.