In his Easter message, His Beatitude Claudiu Pop, leader of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, asked the faithful to pray, in particular for their brothers in Ukraine and in the Middle East: “May the Lord give them the strength not to give in to desperation and may He help them spot, amidst the dark clouds of pain, the faint glimmer of hope”. The Major Archbishop of Alba Iulia and Fagaras pointed out that Easter – which Romanian Greek Catholics celebrate on April 12th – puts Christians in front of the truth of their identity, as “witnesses and announcers of Christ”. A difficult mission, this one, today, “at a point in history in which the world seems to be consumed with hatred and violence”. “How can we speak of light with darkness creeping into everything – mgr. Pop wonders –, intruding into every space of life and spreading out onto consciences, like a shadow that never wants to go away? And above all how could hope still make its way in a world that is torn by the wars that surround us and by those that trouble us inside, by economic, moral and existential crises, by deep concerns, and by an increasingly overwhelming lack of prospects?” In reply to this, mgr. Pop recalled that “the force of light cannot be annihilated by darkness, because God is on our side even when everything seems to be lost. He lights the flame of hope just in the time of trouble”. Finally, the Archbishop encouraged the faithful to be reliable witnesses of the Resurrected Christ by keeping the flame of hope alight.