Pope baptizes babies amid cries and coos

Pope Francis shows a booklet on Jesus Christ that will be distributed to faithful during the angelus prayer from his studio’s window overlooking St. Peter’s square, at the Vatican, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis on Sunday baptized 28 babies in the Sistine Chapel, joking when their cries became a crescendo that “the concert has begun.”

The Pope kept his remarks short, noting the babies could be upset by a new place or perhaps were awakened early for the ceremony on Sunday morning in the chapel decorated by Michelangelo and where Popes are elected in closed-door conclaves.

Francis joked that Jesus’ first “homily” was perhaps his baby cries.

Parents approached the Pope one by one, with mothers holding their babies, dressed in finery. Francis pronounced each child’s name as he performed the sacrament formally welcoming them into the Catholic Church.

Some babies slept through it all; others fussed. At least one woman nursed her infant. On Saturday, the Pope will baptize eight infants born in quake-devastated central Italy.

Mass marking Epiphany

On Jan. 6, Francis treated several hundreds of homeless people and refugees to a simple sandwich lunch to thank them for helping to hand out religious pamphlets after he celebrated at St. Peter’s Basilica the annual Mass marking Epiphany, the biblical tale of the three wise men—or Magi—who set out from the East to find the infant Jesus and offer precious gifts.

The Epiphany, or the 12th day of Christmas, marks the official end to the festive season for many Christians.

At the end of Friday’s service, homeless people and refugees joined volunteers to hand out 50,000 booklets with biblical tales of God’s mercy to pilgrims gathered in a frigid St. Peter’s Square.

Francis said he, too, wanted to give the faithful the gift of God’s mercy for the coming year.

Speaking from the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Francis compared the Magi’s gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense to Jesus to the pamphlets handed out to the roughly 35,000 faithful in St. Peter’s Square.

“I thought I would give you a little gift too. The camels are missing but I will give you the gift,” he said.

“I wish you a year of justice, forgiveness, serenity, but above all mercy. Reading this book will help—it fits in your pocket!” he added.

The Pope then offered some 300 needy people a simple lunch of a sandwich and drink, part of his long-running outreach to the poor and homeless who live around the Vatican.

The picnic, announced by the Pope’s charity office, was the latest gesture from the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to the needy, whose plight he has made a central cause of his papacy.

After the canonization of Mother Teresa last year, Francis ordered showers for the homeless to be set up just off St. Peter’s Square and treated 1,500 poor people to Neapolitan pizza.

Criticism of Church

During this Christmas season, Francis emphasized the humble setting of Christ’s birth while criticizing a Church that had closed in on itself, its wealth and its achievements.

It’s a message Francis has repeated during his papacy, faulting those who are obsessed with Christianity’s rules and morals over God’s mercy, particularly to society’s most marginal.

Francis criticized those who had been “anesthetized” to God’s mercy, who wanted to “control everything and everyone” and feared any challenges to their wealth and achievements.

They suffered, he said, from “a bewilderment born of fear and foreboding before anything that challenges us, calls into question our certainties and our truths, our ways of clinging to the world and this life.” —REPORTS FROM THE WIRES