The 86-year-old pope is recuperating from bronchitis, which saw him recently hospitalized for three days
The evening basilica service began in darkness. Then the basilica’s cavernous interior was suddenly bathed in light, reflecting the Christian beliefs that Jesus rose from his death by crucifixion and that goodness can triumph over evil.
He cited other sources of discouragement: “the attitudes of calculation and indifference that seem to prevail in society, the cancer of corruption, the spread of injustice, the icy winds of war.” “The power of Easter, brothers and sisters, summons you to roll away every stone of disappointment and mistrust,’’ the pope said.
At the start of the Easter vigil, Francis, who arrived in a wheelchair he uses to cope with knee pain, incised in the wax of a tall candle a cross, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet — alpha and omega — and the numerals of this year. Then the lit candle was carried by a cleric up the basilica’s center aisle, past darkened pews filled with some 8,000 faithful. Dozens of cardinals and other prelates followed, each carrying a smaller, lit candle.
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