(AFP) Hundreds of pilgrims filed into Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus’s resurrection, for Easter celebrations on Sunday.
Catholics and Protestants mark Easter on Sunday, while Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrated Palm Sunday, with Easter Sunday coming for the Orthodox churches on April 28.
The church, in the Old City of Jerusalem, is built at the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.
A recently renovated ornate shrine within the church surrounds the cave where Jesus is believed to have been interred.
The Western and Eastern faiths mingled there in a packed crowd.
“Too much of an unruly crowd is not so spiritual,” grumbled Donatella Buhler from Switzerland, there with her children.
Polish pilgrim Matthew Novak was more impressed.
“It’s really different,” he said. “You can feel the spirit of religion.”
A Syriac Orthodox priest blesses pilgrims during the Palm Sunday procession at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City on April 21, 2019. – Hundreds of pilgrims filed into Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus’s resurrection, for Easter celebrations. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)
Roman Catholic Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa celebrated mass near the shrine and alluded to the pain and violence all around, and to the hope born of faith.
“Each of us brings his or her experience of Easter, of death and resurrection,” he said in his sermon.
“In the tragic situation we are living, it is this hope that comes to the rescue of a faith that is at odds every day with such great violence.”
He did not directly mention Sunday’s series of bomb attacks in Sri Lanka which included strikes on three churches, killing more than 200 people.
On Friday, Western Christians traced the route of the Stations of the Cross through the Old City, passing through the traditional sites of Jesus’s condemnation up to his crucifixion.