Pope Francis offered Easter Sunday Mass in a near-empty St. Peter’s Basilica.
Photo: andreas solaro/pool/ShutterstockROME—Celebrating Easter in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis on Sunday proclaimed what he called a “contagion of hope,” after he offered Mass in a near-empty St. Peter’s Basilica.
Speaking before just a handful of people, the pontiff called for the “victory of love over the root of evil, a victory that does not bypass suffering and death, but passes through them, opening a path in the abyss, transforming evil into good.”
Similar scenes played out in churches large and small throughout the world.
Easter, which Catholics and Protestants observed on Sunday and Orthodox Christians will celebrate on April 19, is the holiest day in the Christian calendar, when the faithful believe that Jesus rose from dead.
Under restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic, millions marked the day in isolation at home, unable to receive Communion but in many cases watching their priests or ministers on TV or over the internet.
“Offer this Easter celebration of the Holy Eucharist and your hunger for it, for the safety of your loved ones, yourselves and our world at this time. God is not limited by our separation,” Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, celebrating with a congregation of just 10 in the city’s cathedral, said in his homily Sunday.
In the U.S., some Protestant churches were planning to hold services despite restrictions by civil authorities, raising the prospect of clashes with law enforcement in some jurisdictions.
On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence, chairman of the White House’s coronavirus task force, urged fellow Christians to heed national guidelines discouraging gatherings of more than 10 people.
This year’s Easter was marked not only by the unprecedented circumstance of churches closed world-wide but by uncertainty over the pandemic’s duration and its consequences for society, including religious life.
“We do not know what will be our life after the lock down,” said Bishop Broderick Pabillo, leader of the Catholic Archdiocese of Manila, in his Easter Message on Friday. “We will rise up, hopefully not to go back to our former way of life...We will rise up with greater trust in our God who never leaves us and who sustains us in difficult times.”
Yet history suggests that the devastating effects of the pandemic, on the economy as well as public health, could weaken religious faith in some parts of the world.
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“For the West, this could be a really catastrophic blow for institutional religion,” said Philip Jenkins, a professor of history at Baylor University, who noted that the 2008 economic crisis was followed by a precipitous decline in religious affiliation among Americans.
Mr. Jenkins said the effect could be very different in developing countries.
“In Africa or Asia, you could imagine an upsurge of healing movements and healing churches when all kinds of secular medicine have failed,” he said, recalling the rise of such movements in Africa during the 1918 influenza pandemic. “If all systems are collapsing then people turn to religion.”
In another view, the lockdowns are an opportunity for Pope Francis and other Christian leaders to stress their teachings on social justice and the environment.
“We’re seeing some of the benefits of the cessation of economic activity,” such as improving air quality, said John Milbank, an Anglican theologian and professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham in the U.K.. “It brings benefits to humans as well as nature, to some degree, because it reminds us of priorities: family, home, neighbors, region.”
“The church needs to be talking about these ethical and theological lessons that we can be taking from this,” Mr. Milbank added.
Pope Francis has taken the occasion to stress such lessons.
“Every crisis contains both danger and opportunity: the opportunity to move out from the danger,” the pope told his biographer, Austen Ivereigh, in an interview published earlier this week. “This is the time to take the decisive step, to move from using and misusing nature to contemplating it.”
Italian Carabinieri police standing inside an empty St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sunday.
Photo: Andrew Medichini/Associated PressThe pope observed a long moment of silence in lieu of a homily at Mass on Sunday, but afterward, in his traditional Easter message “to the city (of Rome) and the world,” the pope consoled victims of Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and thanked health-care workers on the front lines.
Along with a survey of trouble spots around the world, including the Middle East, the pope called for forgiveness or reduction of the debt owed by poorer countries, the relaxation of international sanctions during the pandemic and a reaffirmation of solidarity within the European Union, whose unity has been strained by the crisis.
Yet nothing the pope has said since the start of the pandemic has stirred as much interest as his gestures and use of traditional symbols, especially his dramatic blessing of Rome and the world on the rainy night of March 27, when he stood alone in an empty St. Peter’s Square, holding up a gold monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament.
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That ceremony also featured a “miraculous crucifix,” which normally hangs in a Rome church, and which devotees carried through the city’s streets during an outbreak of the plague in the 16th century. The crucifix has remained in St. Peter’s for this year’s Holy Week celebrations, including Sunday’s Easter Mass.
Some say such relics can be powerful signs of hope that resonate even beyond the ranks of believers.
“The Catholic Church is the most stable institution in the world, it’s got a 2,000-year history of continuity,” said the Rev. John O’Malley, a church historian at Georgetown University. “It’s lived through all kinds of upheavals and somehow or other has survived. So this is not the end of everything. The church is a good symbol of that.”
Write to Francis X. Rocca at francis.rocca@wsj.com
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