The war in Ukraine determined the Easter celebrations with Pope Francis in Rome this year.

The pope remained true to his line of not naming Russia and Putin as aggressors.

"Disputes, wars and disputes may give way to understanding and reconciliation," Francis said on Easter Monday after midday prayer in front of thousands of believers in St. Peter's Square in Rome.

Thomas Jansen

Editor in Politics.

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In his Easter message, which Francis read from the Benedictine loggia in St. Peter's Basilica on Sunday, he called for an end to "the cruel and senseless war" in Ukraine.

“Stop flexing your muscles while people are suffering.” Earlier on Saturday evening, during the celebration of the Easter Vigil, Francis addressed the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Melitopol and a number of Ukrainian parliamentarians who, at the Vatican’s invitation, were attending the Easter Vigil service in St. Peter's Basilica.

"In this darkness in which you live, Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen MPs, in the darkness of war, of cruelty, we all pray, we pray with you and for you this night, we pray in the face of so much suffering ' he said at the end of his sermon.

He ended it with the traditional Eastern Church Easter greeting in Old Church Slavonic: “Christos voskrese!

Christ is risen!"

Archbishop of Kyiv: Russia's aggression not taken into account

After severe criticism from the Ukrainian side, the Vatican had changed a text for the Way of the Cross with the Pope on Good Friday at short notice.

However, he insisted that a Ukrainian and a Russian family carry the cross together at the 13th Station of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome, which is dedicated to the death of Jesus.

A text was originally intended for this, which said, among other things: “Why all this?

What mistake have we made?

why did you let us down

Why did you abandon our peoples?

Why did you tear our families apart like this?

Why don't we have the will to dream and live anymore?

Why has our land become as dark as Calvary?”

The Greek Catholic Archbishop of Kyiv, Svyatoslav Shevchuk, had spoken out against these Vatican plans: "I consider this idea inadvisable and ambiguous as it does not take into account the context of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine," it said in a statement Shevchuks.

For many Catholic Ukrainians, the planned texts and gestures at this station of the Cross are "incomprehensible and even offensive", according to the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Ukrainian Ambassador to the Holy See Andriy Yurasch wrote on Twitter that the Ukrainian embassy "understands and shares the general concerns in Ukraine and in many other communities".

The Vatican then replaced the originally planned text of the two families with the sentences: "In the face of death, silence speaks louder than many words.

So let us pause to pray in silence, and let each one pray in his heart for peace in the world.”

The Ukraine war also determined the statements made by leading representatives of the two major churches in Germany on the Easter days.

The chairwoman of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Annette Kurschus, advocated arms deliveries to Ukraine, whose ethical acceptability is disputed within her church.

The people in Ukraine, whose houses and cities are being bombed, need help to defend themselves - including weapons, Kurschus told the Weser Kurier newspaper.

"'Creating peace without weapons' is currently failing because of an aggressor who does not adhere to any international rules and with whom it is impossible to build trust." That would "honestly have to be integrated into the Protestant peace ethic," said Kurschus.

On Good Friday, the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Georg Bätzing, paid tribute to the courage of the television editor Marina Owsjannikova, who had protested against the attack on Ukraine on Russian state television.

"The situation reminded me of how Jesus stood before Pilate and said: 'I was born and came into the world to bear witness to the truth,'" said Bätzing in Limburg Cathedral.

Munich Archbishop Reinhard Cardinal Marx said with regard to the Ukraine war that people have the right to defend and protect their own lives and those of their fellow human beings, the many innocent people.

Nevertheless, the question arises as to how things will continue.