VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis delivered a plea for peace in his first Easter Sunday message to the world, decrying seemingly endless conflicts in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula after celebrating Mass along with more than 250,000 people in flower-bedecked St. Peter’s Square.

After Mass, Francis stepped aboard an open-topped white pope mobile for a cheerful spin through the joyous crowd, kissing babies and patting children on the head.

In his softly and slowly pronounced speech, Francis defined Easter as an “exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness.” As popes before him have, he urged Israelis and Palestinians, who “struggle to find the road of agreement” to find the courage to resume peace talks and end a conflict that “has lasted all too long.” And, in reflecting on the two-year-old Syrian crisis, Francis asked, “How much suffering must there still is before a political solution” can be found? The pope also expressed desire for a “spirit of reconciliation” on the Korean peninsula, where North Korea says it has entered “a state of war” with South Korea. He also decried violence in Africa, where he singled out for condemnation terrorists’ hostage taking, as well as strife in Mali and warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in the Central African Republican, which has driven people from their homes.