Good Friday is the most solemn day in the calendar of all Churches as they recall Christ's passion and death. But many Church leaders must feel that their own branches of the Church are bruised and battered this day.
In Rome, there are increasing concerns about the health of Pope John Paul, who underwent a "serious crisis" earlier this week, prompting further alarm within the Vatican. In Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams is feeling the fallout from the divisions within the Anglican Communion, openly aired at the recent Primates' meeting in Dromantine. Even in Jerusalem, the city of Christ's crucifixion, the Orthodox Church (which is not celebrating Easter this year until May 1st) has taken a battering with allegations of underhand property deals, financial misappropriation, scandalous behaviour among the clergy, and vote rigging in the election of the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
In Ireland, as the Catholic bishops consider the accumulating problems arising from decades of clerical child sex abuse, their least concern may be that the scandals have cost almost €11 million to date; their gravest concerns must focus on the shattered lives of those children, and on the declining confidence in Church leaders revealed in a study, published this week, of religious values and attitudes. The significant fall in confidence in the Church among Catholics in the Republic reflects those recent scandals, yet is also part of an underlying trend that has been developing since the 1970s.
But Good Friday is not just a day of solemnity and sorrow. In the Christian faith it is also a day laden with the richest of hopes. For Christians believe that God, who created humanity in his own image and likeness, also took on the image and likeness of that same humanity in the person of Jesus, who died on the Cross but who rose again from the dead on Easter Day.
Easter is always filled with hope and new promise. Christians can continue to hope that despite scandals and divisions, the Church will be healed, renewed and transformed. And they know that the promise of transformation applies not only to the Church but to all of humanity. That Easter promise can provide particular hope in Northern Ireland today, where the courage of the McCartney family offers inspiration amid continuing uncertainty over the future of the Belfast Agreement. It is a promise that still offers hope in the Middle East, in the lands where Christ and his first disciples brought their message but which still yearn for peace.
And it is a promise of hope waiting to be fulfilled on behalf of the people of Africa, groaning under debt, impoverishment and problems compounded by the failure of richer governments to meet their commitments to the Millennium Development Goals and to make poverty history. While those goals remain in the distant future, while those promises remain unfulfilled, while these hopes are trodden on, Christ continues to be crucified every day.