Pasqua and the prayer of the Pope

Buona Pasqua a tutti in Cristo Risorto e Asceso al Cielo.

(source: Naharnet)
Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday expressed concern over Lebanon's role and future due to the ongoing political crisis between the Hizbullah-led opposition and Premier Fouad Saniora's majority government.
The pope also decried the "suffering in the world" in his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) on Easter Sunday.

"In Lebanon, the paralysis of the country's political institutions threatens the role that the country is called to play in the Middle East and puts its future seriously in jeopardy.

"… I cannot forget the difficulties faced daily by the Christian communities and the exodus of Christians from that blessed Land which is the cradle of our faith," the 79-year-old pontiff said.

"How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world? Natural calamities and human tragedies that cause innumerable victims and enormous material destruction are not lacking," he said in the message beamed around the world.

"I am thinking of the scourge of hunger, of incurable diseases, of terrorism and kidnapping of people, of the thousand faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the exploitation of persons," the 79-year-old pontiff said.
"My thoughts go to recent events in Madagascar, in the Solomon Islands, in Latin America and in other regions of the world," Benedict said from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica to a crowd of tens of thousands filling the square as well as the main street leading up to it.

"I look with apprehension at the conditions prevailing in several regions of Africa," in several parts of the world's poorest continent, notably Zimbabwe, Darfur and Somalia.

"Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis, and for this reason the bishops of that country in a recent document indicated prayer and a shared commitment for the common good as the only way forward," he said.

"In the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees," the pope said in the message broadcast live by 67 television stations.