VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI urged a world confronting a financial crisis, conflict and increasing poverty not to lose hope at Christmas but to join in “authentic solidarity” to prevent global ruin.
His message of salvation amid growing concern about the economic meltdown facing rich and poor nations alike was echoed across the continent in London, where Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II called for courage in response to the rough times.
Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to tens of thousands of pilgrims, tourists and Romans in the square below, the pope called his Christmas message known as “Urbi et Orbi” — Latin for “to the City and to the World” — a “proclamation of hope.”
Wearing a crimson mantle against a damp chill, Benedict expressed hope that dialogue and negotiation would prevail to find “just and lasting solutions” to conflicts in the Holy Land and elsewhere in the Middle East.
He decried suffering in Africa and terrorism, and called for an end to “internecine conflict” dividing ethnic and social groups.
The pope singled out the plight of those in war-torn eastern Congo, in Sudan’s Darfur region, in Somalia where he said “interminable” suffering is the tragic consequence of “the lack of stability and peace” — and in Zimbabwe where people have been “trapped for all too long in a political and social crisis which, sadly, keeps worsening.”
