Pope prays for peace in first Christmas mass

POPE Leo XIV has delivered his first Christmas Day message, urging the faithful to shed indifference in the face of those who have lost everything, like in Gaza, and the many migrants who cross the Mediterranean Sea for a better future.

- SILVIA STELLACCI

The first US pontiff addressed 26,000 people from the loggia overlooking St Peter's Square for the traditional Urbi et Orbi address - Latin for "To the city and to the world" - which serves as a summary of the woes facing the world.

While the crowd gathered under a steady downpour during the papal mass inside St Peter's Basilica, the rain had subsided by the time Leo took a brief tour of the square in the popemobile, then spoke to the crowd from the loggia.

Leo revived the tradition of offering Christmas greetings in multiple languages abandoned by his predecessor, Pope Francis. He received especially warm cheers when he made his greetings in his native English and Spanish, the language of his adopted country of Peru, where he served first as a missionary and then as archbishop.