God suffers with the victims of earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters and helps them cope with the pain and grief, the Archbishop of Wales said in his Easter message.

Preaching today at Llandaff Cathedral, Dr Barry Morgan said that God does not send disasters to punish people.

He said that God also does not intervene to prevent them from hapening.

Despite this, the death and resurrection of Jesus show people that God shares their pain and that his love overcomes destruction and tragedy, he maintained.

God also wants people to help care for all victims of our world and to work for a more just society, he said.

He pointed to the recent earthquake in New Zealand and the devastation of the tsunami in north Japan and admitted that many people could ask: where is God in all this?

“Christians cannot explain great disasters and suffering but perhaps we can respond," he said.

"We believe that the God revealed by Jesus is the God of love and compassion and that his desire is for those things, which are for our good.

"He is not a heartless judge or a puppeteer or someone to be manipulated.

"The God of Jesus is the God who is always on the side of those who are suffering."

He said that although God does not solve all our problems for us, he is there to help us carry them.

"That is the heart of the message of Easter – that the God revealed and embodied by Jesus is not a remote, uncaring God but a God who weeps and suffers with His world and shows that in the death of Jesus by sharing its sorrow even to the point of a cruel death," he said.

“The resurrection of Jesus from the dead goes one step further – it declares that in the providence of God, death, destruction and tragedy do not have the last word. In the end, it is God and resurrection life that ultimately triumph and you and I, as disciples of Jesus, are invited to join Hhm in caring for all of the victims of our world, working for a more just society and so joining him in his act of making whole His world.”