Pope fears 'war has been declared on peace'

Pope John Paul yesterday used his traditional Easter message to plead for peace in a Middle East "plunged again in these very days into horror and despair". He said that the escalating violence there made it seem "that war has been declared on peace".

The 81-year-old Pope, whose severe arthritis and Parkinson's disease forced him to reduce his participation in Holy Week rites this year, appealed to Christian communities around the world to proclaim the resurrection of Christ and work to "end the tragic sequence of attacks and killings that bloody the Holy Land".

The Pope proclaimed the message of Christ's peace to an apparently heedless world, increasingly gripped by anguish and bloodshed.

"Peace in the manner of the world - the experience of every age shows it - is often a precarious balance of powers, that sooner or later turn against one another once more," the Pope said, speaking to a crowd of around 70,000 people gathered in St Peter's Square.

Speaking from a gold and white throne mounted on the steps of St Peter's Basilica and surrounded by thousands of flowers, John Paul prayed that the world's believers would join their efforts to build a more just and fraternal humanity.

"May they work tirelessly to ensure that religious convictions may never be the cause of division and hatred, but only and always a source of brotherhood, harmony, love," he said. Nothing was resolved by war, which only brought greater suffering and death, he said, urging political and religious leaders not to remain inactive.

"Denunciation must be followed by practical acts of solidarity that will help everyone to rediscover mutual respect and return to frank negotiation," the Pope said.

At the weekend the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano denounced the inertia of world leaders in the face of the renewed Middle East conflict.