Pope's special Christmas greetings and blessing

(December 25, 2009) Pope Benedict XVI ushered in Christmas of 2009 for over a billion Catholics worldwide with a Christmas vigil Mass Thursday night in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. However, he left Christmas Day Mass the following morning on Dec. 25th to Cardinal Angelo Comastri, the archpriest of st. Peter’s Basilica. At midday, Pope Benedict appeared at the central balcony of the St. Peter’s Basilica overlooking St. Peter’s Square to deliver his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” Christmas message and blessing, and greeted the people of the world in more than 60 languages. The event was telecast live by numerous networks around the world. The Latin expression “Urbi et Orbi” means “to the city of Rome and to the world”, meaning the Pope’s message to Rome. The Pope is both the bishop of Rome diocese and head of the universal Catholic Church. The papal “Urbi et Orbi” message is delivered twice a year – at Christmas and at Easter. After the Urbi et Orbi Christmas message, Pope Benedict delivered his Christmas greetings in 65 languages of the world including Latin. 15 of them were in Asian languages, namely, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali, Burmese, Urdu of Pakistan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Sinhala of Sri Lanka, Thai, Indonesian, Khmer of Cambodia and Tagalog of the Philippines.
Listen to the Pope's greetings starting with English:

Christmas greetings over; Pope Benedict concluded by imparted his special Christmas ‘Urbi et Orbi’ blessing. A cardinal announced that all those following the event in St. Peter’s Square as well as via radio and TV could obtain a plenary indulgence in keeping with the rules established by the Catholic Church. An indulgence is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment in purgatory, due for sins which have already been forgiven. There are a number of conditions that a person seeking an indulgence must fulfil, most importantly a total detachment from sin. Hence those receiving the Pope’s special blessing for Christmas could obtain a full indulgence.
Listen to the Pope’s Christmas blessing: