Easter offers ‘joy’ all year round, says Pope

AFP/DPA/Vatican City

The joy of Easter should be experienced all year round, Pope Francis said yesterday, addressing thousands of pilgrims in Saint Peter’s Square the day after the holiest day in the Christian calendar.

The new Pope, urging the faithful to “express in life the sacrament we received” on Easter Sunday in their behaviour and choices, said: “It is our daily commitment but also our daily joy.”

The crowd braved unseasonably cool temperatures to hear the first Latin American leader of the world’s 1.2bn Catholics, speaking from a window in the Apostolic Palace overlooking the square.

Easter, which commemorates the Resurrection of Christ, has “an enormous potential of renewal, for personal existence, for the life of families, for social relations”, he said, before reciting the traditional Regina Coeli prayer for Easter Monday.

Francis also made an unscheduled visit to pray by the tomb of St Peter yesterday.

The presumed remains of the Catholic Church’s first pope are kept in a mausoleum beneath Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Peter was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus and is believed to have died by crucifixion in Rome during emperor Nero’s rule.

The Pope “stood in silent prayer, in deep and heartfelt meditation” before his tomb, the Vatican said in a statement.

Francis also visited the graves of former pontiffs Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul I.

Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, has set the tone for a papacy that centres around humility and simplicity, recasting the image of a Catholic Church that in recent years had been tarred by sex abuse and corruption scandals.