Watch again as Pope Francis leads New Year’s Day Mass from the Vatican on Monday (1 January).
After mass the Pope will go to Peter’s Balcony to deliver his papal blessing to the watchful crowd at St Peter’s Square, weather permitting. In 2020 the head of the Catholic Church was forced to give the Angelus blessing from the papal library due to poor weather.
Last year was a solemn event: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 95, causing thousands of Catholics to gather in Saint Peter’s Square to remember the former leader of the Church.
Pope Francis offered prayers for the “tormented Ukrainian people and the Palestinian and Israeli populations” during his traditional Sunday blessing on New Year’s Eve.
Giving his blessing from a window overlooking St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, the pope recalled 2023 as a year marked by wartime suffering.
