VATICAN CITY (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday celebrated Easter mass before tens of thousands of pilgrims huddled under a sea of umbrellas in St Peter's Square on the holiest day of the Christian calendar.
Rain pelted the flower-bedecked square throughout the mass celebrating the Resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion on Good Friday.
The 80-year-old leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics chose the white and gold vestments and gold mitre of Benedict XV, his namesake who reigned from 1914 to 1922, for the occasion.
Religious freedom has been a theme of this year's Easter celebrations. At Saturday's Easter vigil, the pope baptised a former Muslim and a critic of Islamic extremism, journalist Magdi Allam.
Good Friday's Way of the Cross procession was marked by meditations penned by outspoken Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen, who referred to the "martyrs" among China's tiny Catholic minority.
Zen is a key figure for Asian Catholics including those in China who are split between the official and clandestine Catholic churches.
After the mass, the pope was to deliver the traditional "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world) blessing, an occasion to speak out about conflicts and ills besetting the planet.
He was to read out the message in Italian, then offer Easter greetings in 63 languages including Esperanto to the pilgrims in the rain-soaked square and millions of others watching live broadcasts in 67 countries.
Allam, 55, an editorial writer and deputy publisher of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, wrote a letter to the paper published Sunday in which he branded his former faith as intrinsically violent.
"I had to do this (abandon Islam)", Allam wrote. "Beyond ... the phenomenon of extremists and Islamist terrorism at the global level, the root of evil is inherent to a physiologically violent and historically conflictual Islam."
In its relations with Islam and other religions the Vatican has stressed both freedom of religion and the right to convert to another faith.
Observers noted the pope's penchant for liturgical objects that have not been used since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, saying he favours continuity over a rupture with the past.
On Sunday, Benedict XVI carried a pastoral staff with a cross at the top which was used by popes Pius XII and John XXIII, instead of the silver staff with Christ on the Cross that had been used by Paul VI and was especially associated with Benedict's predecessor John Paul II.
For the Palm Sunday mass a week ago, Benedict wore replicas of the vestments used by 16th-century pope Leon X Medicis.
Last September the 16th-century mass in Latin known as the Tridentine Mass was revived as an option for Roman Catholic churches, capping a long campaign that threatened to divide the Church.
The mass had been discarded by Vatican II..
