VATICAN/BETHLEHEM, West Bank, 26 December 2007 — Pope Benedict XVI lamented the “grim sound of arms” in the world’s conflict zones yesterday in a message of peace echoed by other senior clerics as the world’s Christians celebrated the birth of Christ. Delivering his traditional blessing to thousands of worshippers in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the head of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics said: “On this day of peace, my thoughts turn especially to those places where the grim sound of arms continues to reverberate.”

He emphasized “the whole of the Middle East — especially Iraq, Lebanon and the holy land,” and singled out Darfur, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and “many other crisis situations that unfortunately are frequently forgotten.”

The pontiff prayed that political leaders would find “the wisdom and courage to seek and find humane, just and lasting solutions.” The pope spoke of “those who live in the darkness of poverty, injustice and war ... those who are still denied their legitimate aspirations for a more secure existence, for health, education, stable employment.”

Benedict said: “It is the most vulnerable members of society — women, children, the elderly — who are so often the victims of brutal armed conflicts, terrorism and violence of every kind, which inflict such terrible sufferings on entire populations.”

On Christmas Eve, the Catholic leader in the holy land, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, had also pleaded for peace in the Middle East. “This land of God cannot be for some a land of life and for others a land of death, exclusion, occupation, or political imprisonment,” he said in a speech for midnight mass in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attended the mass fresh from last month’s meeting in the US city of Annapolis, where he formally relaunched the peace process with Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Midnight mass is nothing more than a memory for Christians in Baghdad where danger is ever present. The last one was celebrated four years ago, before the American invasion in 2003. A mass is now held at dusk on Christmas Eve, and another on the morning of Christmas Day.

In the Roman Catholic-dominated Philippines, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales urged the government to address injustices suffered by the country’s millions of poor.

In Indian Kashmir, Muslims joined several hundred Christians at a mass and offered prayers for peace to return to the troubled region. In neighboring Bangladesh, Christians offered prayers for victims of last month’s cyclone, which killed at least 3,300 people. “Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by the devastating Cyclone Sidr,” Archbishop of Dhaka Poulinus Costa said.

In London, the head of the worldwide Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, slammed “human greed” in his Christmas speech, saying it threatened to wreck the Earth’s fragile environmental balance.

People should treat each other and nature with “reverence,” he said, adding: “When we threaten the balance of things, we don’t just put our material survival at risk; more profoundly we put our spiritual sensitivity at risk.”