Archbishop calls for forgiveness

In his Easter sermon, Dr Rowan Williams said the story of Easter should provide comfort and encouragement during times of conflict and suspicion.

He told the congregation at Canterbury Cathedral: "We share one human story in which we are all caught up in one sad tangle of selfishness and fear and so on.

"But God has entered that human story. He has lived a life of divine and unconditional love in a human life of flesh and blood."

Dr Williams related a visit to the Solomon Islands in 2004 when a leader caught up in the recent civil war there took public responsibility for failure. "He (the leader) said: 'I need to say in public that we were responsible as well as the people on the islands.'

"Here was a politician representing a community that had suffered greatly and inflicted great suffering as well, saying 'We were all wrong. We needed healing and forgiveness.' And it was as if for the first time you could see the bare bones of what reconciliation means."

Dr Williams said that the lesson can be applied to other conflicts "when people learn to listen to stories other than their own".

"Going forward requires us all to learn a measure of openness to discovering things about ourselves we did not know, seeing ourselves through the eyes of another.

"What they see may be fair or unfair, but it is a reality that has been driving someone's reactions and decisions. We'd better listen, hateful and humiliating though it may be for some of us."

Progress towards reconciliation in Northern Ireland had allowed people to start hearing about each other's histories, according to the Archbishop. "Everyone in this history made decisions, some shockingly evil, some tragic, some foolish (but) those decisions and the sufferings that came from them don't have the power to tell you what decisions you have to make today."