Easter Brings Hope to Christians Around the World

In grand cathedrals, tiny churches and quiet cemeteries, Christians of both the Eastern Orthodox and Western churches celebrated Easter on Sunday, each community drawing its own message of hope from the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In war-torn Grozny, the capital of the separatist republic of Chechnya in southern Russia, 170 people gathered in the ruins of a church under heavy guard against rebel attack. The Russian Orthodox congregation, mostly elderly, stood in the open air among jagged brick walls, while priests chanted and blessed the crowd with holy water.

“This is the first bright day in two years,” said worshiper Natalia Nefedova. “I wish people could live without fighting, without war.” After the service, priests blessed conscripts at Russian military barracks.

Pope John Paul II led tens of thousands of worshipers in Easter Mass at the Vatican. Braving unusually low temperatures, the frail pontiff insisted that the world can change for the better, with peace possible in the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa and other places riven by conflict.

“Rediscover with joy and wonder that the world is no longer a slave to the inevitable. This world of ours can change: Peace is possible even where for too long there has been fighting and death,” the pope told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, which blossomed with 17,000 yellow, orange, white and blue flowers from the Netherlands.

In the U.S., millions of Americans streamed into churches for services. President Bush and three generations of his family celebrated Easter at a sunrise service near his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Today, Bush will preside over the annual White House egg roll.

The Church of England’s senior clergyman offered words of comfort to citizens worn down by floods and the foot-and-mouth livestock epidemic.

“Some have talked of our recent trials and tribulations as the ‘judgment of God,’ ” said the archbishop of Canterbury, George L. Carey. “I resist that notion. For me, they challenge us to understand more deeply not God’s judgment, but his love and what that offers us.”

In Moscow, the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Alexi II, presided over services at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. President Vladimir V. Putin and his wife stood in a place of honor near the main altar.

Alexi asked God to help Putin “in the difficult task of serving Russia and its people, who place their hopes in you and love you,” the Interfax news agency reported.

In Moscow and other Russian cities, people visited cemeteries to clean relatives’ graves, paint small fences surrounding them and lay flowers. The practice dates to the Soviet era, when religious observance was discouraged and a competing tradition was born.

A calendar quirk had Easter falling on the same date for Orthodox and Western churches. Both agree Easter should fall on the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. But the dates vary because Western churches follow the Gregorian calendar, Orthodox the Julian.