The Orthodox Churches celebrated Easter on Sunday 1st May this year. On Good Friday a Russian delegation, composed of personalities of the religious and political world, went to Jerusalem with the task of taking back to Moscow in an Olympic lantern the “sacred fire” that is lit each year in the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre and that was shown in the cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the Russian capital to all the Russian faithful during the celebration of Easter. Present at the rite was also Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had also paid a visit to Jerusalem in recent days and prayed for Russia at the Holy Sepulchre. An Easter message of good wishes was also written by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I. “Christ is risen! he writes -. This announcement continues to be original and startling, because in our age, in spite of the two thousand years that have passed since the birth of Jesus Christ, to this day humanity has not loved life half as much as it was honoured and loved by the God who became Man”.
