Is it still Good Friday in Iraq?
For Christian Science Monitor reporter Peter Ford, visiting a Resurrection Sunday service in Baghdad was a breath of life. "The beauty of the Armenian choir's voices at Easter Mass, swelling with the feast-day's joy, was a balm to my soul," he says at the Monitor's website. "The day before, I had spent several hours visiting some of the palaces that had belonged to Uday Hussein, Saddam's perverted and corrupt elder son. After that glimpse into the heart of darkness, I needed some spiritual uplift."

And at services across Iraq, many parishioners found in the joy of Christ's resurrection hope for the rebirth of their country.

"There's nothing nicer than peace," 46-year-old Boushra Thomas told the Associated Press at St. Therese Catholic Church. "We could not come to church during the war because there was so much shelling and bombing. Danger was everywhere. Now we can come anytime we like."

"We hope this Easter is the beginning of a new life," 22-year-old student Silva Sami told a Baltimore Sun reporter at the Sacred Heart Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad, which was filled to the limit as 450 attended the service yesterday. "This Easter, we pray to be a new beginning of Iraq. There's a lot of damage and dead people, but we know the bombs are not after us."

But according to several news sources today, Iraqi Christians attending Easter services were more concerned that their fellow countrymen are after them.

"Under a gloomy sky, nobody [at Baghdad's Evangelical Protestant Church] could muster even a perfunctory 'Happy Easter' greeting. Instead, many wept through the sermon," reports The Washington Post's Carol Morello.

Indeed, with death and destruction on so many Iraqis' minds, it seems that yesterday's ...