Pope Leo marks first Easter as pontiff with call for hope amid global conflicts

Pope Leo has celebrated his first Easter mass as pontiff with a call to lay down arms and seek peace to global conflicts through dialogue.

But he departed from a tradition of listing the world’s woes by name in the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the loggia of St Peter’s Basilica.

Leo, the first US-born pope, emphasised Easter’s message of hope as a celebration of Jesus’s resurrection after being crucified, in the blessing and his homily.

“Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by his immense love for us. Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace. Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them,” the Pope implored.

With the US-Israeli war on Iran in its second month and Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, Leo acknowledged a sense of indifference “to the deaths of thousands of people… to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow… to the economic and social consequences they produce”.

Without mentioning the wars by name, Leo quoted his predecessor Pope Francis, who during his last public appearance from the same loggia last Easter reminded the faithful of the “great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day”.

Francis, weakened by a long illness, died the next day on Easter Monday.

The Urbi et Orbi blessing, Latin for “to the city and the world”, has traditionally included a litany of the world’s woes, and Leo had followed that formula during his Christmas blessing. There was no immediate explanation for the shift.

Earlier, he addressed 50,000 faithful from an open-air altar in St Peter’s Square flanked with white roses, while the steps leading down to the piazza where the faithful gathered were filled with spring perennials, symbolically resonating with the Pope’s words.

He implored the faithful to keep their hope in the face of death, which lurks “in the abuses that crush the weakest among us, because the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth’s resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys”.

Speaking from the loggia, the Pope announced a prayer vigil for peace April 11 in the Basilica.

“On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that makes us feel powerless in the face of evil,” he said.

Leo greeted the global faithful in 10 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Latin, reviving a practice that Francis had let lapse.

Before retreating into the basilica, Leo stepped forward out of the loggia’s shadow and waved to the cheering crowd below.

During the marathon that is Holy Week, Leo also reclaimed the tradition of washing priests’ feet on Holy Thursday, a gesture of encouragement towards clergy, after Francis had chosen a more inclusive path, travelling to prisons and homes for the disabled to wash the feet of women, non-Christians and prisoners.

The 70-year-old Leo also became the first pope in decades to carry the light wooden cross for the entire 14 stations during the Way of the Cross on Good Friday.