Much Good Friday – little Easter
The current state of the world offers much Good Friday, but little Easter: much suffering, wars, mass death, injustice and environmental destruction, but little hope and confidence.
What themes will Pope Leo XIV emphasise in his Easter message in this current situation?
This ‘Pope of Peace’ repeatedly takes a firm stand against the current warlords in Moscow and Washington. As early as Palm Sunday, the Pope sparked major debate in the US with his sermon. ‘Jesus,’ the Pope said, is the ‘King of Peace’, who rejects all war without exception. Violence is not in keeping with the Christian faith.
Earlier, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, who calls himself the “Minister of War”, had said a prayer in which he asked for “overwhelming force” against America’s enemies and that “every bullet may hit its target”. A justification of mass murder in the name of God, which is in truth the greatest blasphemy.
And Donald Trump said that he knew of “no reconciliation” and would “bomb Iran back to the Stone Age”. War is also glorified in Moscow, where the Russian Patriarch speaks of a “holy war” and sees the warlord Putin as “a gift from God”. In these times of “too much Good Friday”, however, Pope Leo will, in his Easter message in 2026 in particular, praise a different God from the one to whom the current US administration and the Putin administration pray. The God of Jesus contradicts the God of vengeance and war of these governments. On this subject, Heribert Prantl in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (1 April 2026) writes: “This is an Easter-inspired realisation that brings joy and gives hope.”
In his sermon on Palm Sunday, Pope Leo invoked a Jesus-centred image of God by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “However much you pray, I do not hear it. Your hands are full of blood.” The central message of Jesus of Nazareth was unconditional love: love for oneself, love for one’s neighbour, love for those far away, love for God, even love for one’s enemies. The Dalai Lama says the same thing in these words: “I know of only one religion: a good human heart.”
Today’s world finally needs more Easter. Then everything will change.
