VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI led prayers for peace on the holiest day of the Christian year at a rainy outdoor mass here Easter Sunday, exulting conversions to the faith hours after the Vatican highlighted the baptism of Italy’s most prominent Muslim.
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Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters
Pope Benedict XVI delivered the benediction on Easter Sunday.
In a prayer before thousands of soaking pilgrims and tourists on St. Peter’s Square, the pope noted that the disciples had spread the message of Christ’s resurrection — celebrated on Sunday — and as a result “thousands and thousands of persons converted to Christianity.”
“This is a miracle which renews itself even today,” he said.
Days after Osama bin Laden issued a threat against Europe that mentioned the pope specifically, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born writer protected by Italian bodyguards for his criticism of radical Islam, was baptized by the pope Saturday night and received his first communion. The news about Mr. Allam, a secular Muslim married to a Catholic, was accented by a Vatican press release an hour before the baptism ceremony.
“It was the most beautiful day of my life,” Mr. Allam, 55, a deputy editor at Italy’s largest daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, wrote in a column on Sunday. “The miracle of the resurrection of Christ reverberated in my soul, freeing it from the shadows of a preaching where hate and intolerance toward he who is different, toward he who is condemned as an ‘enemy,’ prevailed over love and respect for your neighbor.”
Mr. Allam said that he would take the new middle name of “Cristiano.”
Easter Sunday culminates the busiest week of the year at the Vatican, with scores of masses and ceremonies marking the days in which Jesus Christ was arrested, crucified and resurrected two days later. Along with Christmas, Easter is a day on which the pope delivers his “Urbi et Orbi” address, to “the city and the world.”
As is tradition, the 80-year-old pope prayed for peace in troubled parts of the world, singling out Darfur in Sudan and Somalia, “the tormented Middle East, especially the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon.” He also mentioned Tibet, a sensitive issue for the Vatican, which is working to improve ties with China, amid unconfirmed reports of direct talks here last week between Chinese and Vatican officials.
“How often relations between individuals, between groups and between peoples are marked not by love but by selfishness, injustice, hatred and violence,” the pope said. “These are the scourges of humanity, open and festering in every corner of the planet, although they are often ignored and sometimes deliberately concealed; wounds that torture the souls and bodies of countless of our brothers and sisters.”
Though it was difficult to hear the pope as the rain thumped off umbrellas and cascaded down from Bernini’s colonnades, the pope, kept dry under a canopy in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, delivered Easter greetings in 63 languages, from Italian to Thai, Esperanto to Latin.
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