JERUSALEM (CNS): Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah called for an end to violence in the Holy Land in his annual Easter message.
“We invite you to love in spite of the hatred that demolishes the hearts in these days. This is our Easter wish for all – to see that death is overcome and has no more power in this Holy Land,” Patriarch Sabbah said in the message.
He said Christians believe in the Resurrection and so must keep hoping that one day the Holy Land will be a land of resurrection for all its inhabitants and “no more a land of death and hatred”.
The significance of Easter is the “passage from death to life, from slavery to freedom”, he said, and so he wished for all Christians and Palestinians to pass from their “present death to a new life based on a reacquired freedom, justice, forgiveness, love and reconciliation”.
He said current actions in the Holy Land work against peace. The military actions, sieges of Palestinian cities and villages succeed in violating human dignity and demolishing homes, he said.
“All this gives rise to more death and more destruction of the human dignity that leads to more war and more killing and insecurity,” he said.
