“Often,” Leo said, “the proclamation of truth is obscured by what we today call “fake news” — lies, insinuations, and unfounded accusations.”
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ROME – Pope Leo XIV led the Regina Caeli prayer with pilgrims and tourists gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Monday – a national holiday called Pasquetta or “Little Easter” in Italy – and prayed for his predecessor Francis, who died on Easter Monday of last year after a long battle with respiratory illness.
“With particular affection, in the light of the risen Lord, we remember today Pope Francis, who, on Easter Monday of last year, returned to the Lord,” Leo said in his April 6 Regina Caeli address.
Recalling what he said was Francis’s “profound witness of faith and love,” Leo asked faithful to pray together, “that we may become ever more radiant heralds of the truth.”
Easter Monday is also called lunedi dell’Angelo, or “Angel Monday” in Italy, and is recognized as an official public holiday in scores of predominantly Christian countries around the world.
During the Easter liturgical season, the pope recites the traditional Marian Regina Caeli (coeli) prayer instead of the Angelus on Sundays and special holidays, including Pasquetta.
In his address Monday, Pope Leo focused on the day’s Gospel reading, in which Mary Magdalene meets the risen Jesus while running to announce his resurrection to the disciples, as well as efforts by the leaders of the Sanhedrin to bribe the guards at Jesus’s tomb into saying he had not risen, but that his body had been stolen.
From this one fact, Jesus’s rising from the dead, two narratives are spread, “one a source of new and eternal life, the other of certain and definitive death,” Leo said.
“This contrast invites us to reflect on the value of Christian witness and the integrity of human communication,” he said, lamenting that the proclamation of the truth is often “obscured by what we today call ‘fake news’ — lies, insinuations, and unfounded accusations.”
However, in the midst of this web of often conflicting information, “the truth does not remain hidden; rather, it comes forth to meet us, living and radiant, illuminating even the deepest darkness,” he said.
Just as Jesus told the women at the tomb not to be afraid to go and tell others what they’d seen, Christ offers the same message to Christians now, “Do not be afraid; go and tell,” the pope said.
By doing this, Jesus himself “becomes the Good News to be witnessed in the world,” he said, saying, “the Passover of the Lord is our Passover – the Passover of all humanity – for this man who died for us is the Son of God, who gave his life for us.”
“Just as the risen One, ever living and present, frees the past from a destructive end, so the Easter proclamation redeems our future from the tomb,” he said.
Pope Leo stressed the importance of the Gospel message reaching all those “oppressed by the evil that corrupts history and confuses consciences,” specifically mentioning those suffering war, those persecuted for their faith, and children deprived of education.
“To proclaim the Paschal mystery of Christ in both word and deed means to give a new voice to hope – a hope otherwise stifled by the hands of the violent,” the pope said.
“Wherever it is proclaimed, the Good News sheds light upon every shadow, in every age,” he said, and in a greeting to faithful after the Regina Caeli prayer thanked everyone for their Easter greetings and urged Christians to persevere “in invoking the gift of peace for the whole world.”
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