We send confusing messages at Easter

SUNDAY MORNING EDITORIAL— Pope Francis, on this Easter weekend, asked Christians to remember when they found their faith.

“Look for it,” he said. “The Lord is waiting.”

In Ukraine, pro-Russian forces are spending Easter waiting behind barricades, defying a political solution by which they were supposed to vacate government offices. On the other side of the conflict, the head of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church accused Russia this weekend of aggression.

Venezuelan students marched in Caracas, planning mock crucifixions to protest soaring inflation and shortages of consumer goods.

A group in Ohio that advocates separation of church and state is protesting a pair of crosses displayed for Easter on a municipal building.

But there are hopeful signs, as well. In Cairo, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who hopes to become the next Egyptian president, visited Coptic Pope Tawadros II, a symbolic gesture so different from only a few months ago when Coptic Christian churches were being burned during street riots.

Christian Greek Cypriots and Muslim Turkish Cypriots celebrated the re-opening of an abandoned church with a Holy Week service.

Prince William and Kate attended an Easter Service in Sydney as part of their tour of Australia.

Easter means different things to different people. To devout Christians, it’s about the resurrection of Christ. To others, it’s about chocolate bunnies. But the root of it is in love, sacrifice and renewal.

Whether you’re Christian, some other religion, or atheist, that’s hard to argue with, yet Easter is apparently also a time for conflict, as evidenced by events around the world.

Which is closer to the truth: is Easter a time for hope, or is it just another time in which to carry on as always?

Maybe it’s a time to look inward, as Pope Francis says, and understand our own fallibility.