If this Easter we celebrate Christ's victory over Death through His Resurrection, we must do so knowing our thanksgivings occur amid a world mired in intractable conflict once again, including on the edges of Europe and in the Holy Land.
Pope Francis has attempted to address this and the subsequent slaughter and countless deaths of innocent men, women and children. As a Pope should, one might suggest.
Some, however, are not best pleased with such papal gumption.
“Pope declares Devil victorious and urges humanity to run up white flag,” chortled the News in Brief section in the March issue of Private Eye. “The meek shall surrender the earth.” Less amused were writers in The Guardian, "outraged" and "shocked" at the evidence of Francis’s “pro-Russian sympathies” and “deep-rooted anti-westernism”.
What both media outlets demonstrated was a basic misunderstanding of what the white flag means in military and international humanitarian law. Also revealed was how modern culture commonly conflates two very different things: striving to end intractable conflict through recognising the enemy’s humanity, and the abdication of any sense of purpose or values.
