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Pilgrims mark Holy Week in Rome Pope celebrates Easter Vigil Mass
(about 19 hours later)
In Rome tens of thousands of foreign pilgrims are attending Holy Week ceremonies. Pope Benedict has celebrated the first mass of Easter inside St Peter's Basilica in Rome before a crowd of over 10,000 pilgrims.
On Easter Sunday morning Pope Benedict will be giving his traditional blessing and message, Urbi et Orbi, to the city of Rome and to the world. The Pontiff told worshippers love was stronger than evil and death in his homily at the Easter Vigil Mass.
On Friday night, the white-robed Pope led rites at the Colosseum, the ancient Roman amphitheatre. On Sunday, he will lead a second mass in the open air before a much larger congregation in St Peter's Square and deliver his traditional Easter message.
The ceremonies commemorate the suffering and death by crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict, 79, is celebrating the second Easter of his pontificate.
Thousands of pilgrims, each carrying a flickering candle, prayed with him as a procession of church dignitaries and ordinary believers wound its way through the 2,000-year-old ruins. The mass began with the Pope lighting a single large white candle in the almost darkened basilica.
Pilgrims lined the route to the Roman amphitheatre The light from this candle was then used to kindle thousands of other candles and the basilica gradually became flooded with light symbolising the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
On Saturday night, the Pope will celebrate Easter midnight Mass in St Peter's Basilica. Church in Asia
As the mass begins, the huge darkened building will be suddenly flooded with light symbolising the resurrection of Christ. In the course of the service Pope Benedict baptised eight new members of the Church, including women from China and Japan.
And on Easter Sunday morning Pope Benedict, who celebrates his 80th birthday in a few days' time, will deliver his traditional Easter blessing and message to the city of Rome and to the world. The BBC's David Willey in Rome says that the accent on this year's Easter celebrations in Rome has been on the Catholic church in Asia and particularly China.
Thousands of people are planning also to march through the centre of Rome on Sunday morning in support of international moves to abolish the death penalty in the diminishing number of countries which still carry out capital punishment. Although the number of Catholics in Asia is tiny in relation to those in the other continents of the world, the Vatican regards Asia as its most promising area for future converts.
The Pope is preparing a message to the Catholic church in China which will be published in a few weeks' time, our correspondent adds.
Although the government in Beijing still refuses to recognise the authority of the Pope over the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church and the authority of the Pope to appoint new bishops in China, relations between Rome and Beijing are less tense than for many years.