Pope John Paul II appealed to political and religious leaders on Easter Sunday to work to bring peace to the Middle East, saying that "nothing is resolved by war".
"It seems that war has been declared on peace. But nothing is resolved by war, it only brings greater suffering and death," he said during his annual Easter Sunday "Urbi et Orbi" message from St Peter's Square.
The Pontiff asked politicians and religious leaders "to work so that His \ peace may end the tragic sequence of attacks and killings that bloody the Holy Land, plunged again in these very days into horror and despair".
"No one can remain silent and inactive, no political or religious leader," he added.
John Paul II earlier celebrated Easter Sunday Mass in front of an estimated 50,000 pilgrims in the Vatican square, putting a week behind him in which failing health forced him to curtail involvement in lengthy Holy Week ceremonies.
Increasingly immobilised by osteoarthritis in his right knee and advancing Parkinson's disease, the 81-year-old Pontiff celebrated Mass from an altar which was set up specially to avoid him having to negotiate steps.
The sight of the stooped Pope standing for parts of the Mass has become increasingly rare, but a welcome one for the world's one billion Catholics after a week in which he sat out several of the more important ceremonies. A Rome surgeon, Prof Alfredo Carfagni, said yesterday that he was standing by to operate on the Pope's knee and was merely awaiting confirmation from the Vatican.
Rome's Il Messaggero daily said the operation could take place within days, allowing time for the Pontiff to recover before undertaking a gruelling schedule of foreign visits to Bulgaria and Azerbaijan, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and his native Poland, over the next four months.
The Vatican made no comment on the reports.
However, Vatican sources said that apart from visits to Canada and Mexico at the end of July, and to Poland in mid-to-late August, the other trips were being reconsidered.
During his annual message, John Paul II said that denunciation of war must be followed by "practical acts of solidarity that will help everyone to rediscover mutual respect and return to frank negotiation".
The Pope asked Catholics to remember those suffering throughout the world, particularly Afghanistan.
"How many members of the human family are still subject to misery and violence?" he asked.
"In how many corners of the world do we hear the cry of those who implore help, because they are suffering and dying? From Afghanistan, terribly afflicted in recent months and now stricken by a disastrous earthquake, to so many other countries of the world where social imbalances and rival ambitions still torment countless numbers of our brothers and sisters."