Christians around world celebrate Easter Sunday
Christians around the world celebrated Easter on Sunday, with thousands filling St. Peter's Square to hear Pope Benedict XVI call for an end to war and strife, poverty and financial turmoil.
In his Easter message, the head of the Roman Catholic Church noted that he plans to travel to the Holy Land in just a few weeks and said he would bring a message of hope and love to the region.
Benedict, who turns 82 on Thursday, also delivered the traditional Urbi et Orbi speech — an address to the city of Rome and to the entire world — at the end of his Easter Sunday Mass.
The pontiff tripped as he climbed up to his gilded chair on the loggia, but recovered without incident and delivered his speech to the crowd at the Vatican.
"Reconciliation — difficult but indispensable — is a precondition for a future of overall security and peaceful coexistence," said the Pope, adding that "it can only be achieved through renewed, persevering and sincere efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Easter Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most important day in the Christian church calendar.
The Pope also recalled his recent trip to Africa in urging the faithful to keep up hope to combat poverty and wars.
"Africa suffers disproportionately from the cruel and unending conflicts, often forgotten, that are causing so much bloodshed and destruction in several of her nations," he said.
Benedict celebrated Easter Mass after presiding over a solemn Easter Vigil ceremony Saturday night that lasted more than three hours.
Day of observances in Jerusalem
In Jerusalem, meanwhile, Christians prayed at an ancient church and sang in a garden outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City as they marked Easter Sunday.
Orthodox Christians, who observe a different calendar, marked Palm Sunday, and thousands of Jewish worshippers celebrating the Passover festival thronged a plaza opposite the Western Wall for a traditional blessing.
Roman Catholics held mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditionally believed to mark the site where Jesus was crucified, buried and then resurrected.
Another group of pilgrims chose to mark Easter Sunday outside the walls of the Old City at the Garden Tomb, which some Protestants sanctify as an alternative site for the last events of Jesus' life.
Also Sunday morning, Orthodox priests in black robes and beards and carrying palm fronds filed into the Holy Sepulchre for their own Palm Sunday ceremony.
The Holy Sepulchre is shared by Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian Christians, along with several smaller sects.
Palm Sunday marks the day Jesus entered Jerusalem and was greeted by cheering crowds with palm fronds.
Not far away, in a plaza opposite the 2,000-year-old stones of the Western Wall, Jews gathered for the traditional priestly blessing, a remnant of ritual from the biblical Jewish Temple.
The Western Wall, a retaining wall from the Second Temple, is the holiest site where Jews can pray.