Pope Francis urges hope in Easter message: 'There's a horizon, there's life, there is joy'

Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians alike celebrate Easter on Sunday thanks to an atypical convergence of the calendars used by different branches of the church to calculate the date.

Pope Francis addressed a teeming crowd in Rome, giving his "Urbi et Orbi" homily — a message "to the city and the world" — on the subject of hope in the midst of global and personal suffering. "Jesus has risen from the dead," he said. "And this is not a fantasy. It isn't a party with lots of flowers. This is pretty, but [Easter is] not this. It's more than this."

The resurrection of Christ is "a sign in the midst of so many calamities," Francis continued, that gives us "a sense of looking beyond, of saying, 'Don't look to a wall, there's a horizon, there's life, there is joy.'" In the face of "illnesses, human trafficking, human exploitation, wars, destruction, mutilations, vengeance, hatred," he said, the "church continues to say, 'Stop, Jesus is risen.'"

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