Andrey Smirnov / AFP - Getty Images

Protesters holds posters depicting Alexei Navalny as they attend a rally at the Bolotnaya Square in central Moscow on Monday to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin one year into his new Kremlin term. The posters read: "Navalny is not guilty!" Organizers said tens of thousands attended the rally, which marks one year since a chaotic anti-Kremlin protest that descended into violence, and Putin's return to the presidency a day later. However, police estimated that 7,000 protesters attended on Monday.

News analysis

What a difference a year makes.

On May 6, 2012, the eve of Vladimir Putin’s third inauguration as Russia’s president, tens of thousands of middle-class Russians turned out on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square to chant "Russia without Putin" and "Anyone but Putin."

Their energy was electric. Their anger, palpable.  

But just 12 months later, a smaller crowd gathered at Bolotnaya Square on Monday, just hours before Secretary of State John Kerry arrived for meetings with Putin. The slogans were the same but the chanting was listless. Anger had turned to apathy.

What changed? First and foremost, the opposition movement has been damaged by a crackdown.

May 6, 2012 was the day Putin chose to fall back on old Soviet habits. Riot police and protesters each blame the other for starting the clashes, but by the end of that evening, dozens – on both sides – had been injured.

For the first time since the anti-Putin rallies congealed around blatantly fraudulent parliamentary elections held earlier in December 2011, hundreds of protesters were arrested. Many were released.

But the Russian government went after the protest organizers. More than two dozen were charged with violating social order. A year later, two are serving two- to four-year jail terms; the others are either under house arrest or pre-trial detention.

Russian lawmakers fast-tracked bills that made most protests illegal and all illegal protests very expensive – up to $10,000 in fines.

Then Putin took on the two "leaders" of an opposition which had never really coalesced around a single platform or person.

Alexei Navalny is a 36-year-old anti-corruption blogger who found, with each expanding rally, that his voice could inspire tens of thousands of dissatisfied Russians to hope about the future. 

But shortly after he declared his intention to run in the next presidential election, he was charged with embezzling $500,000 from a timber company he worked for in 2009. He says the charge is trumped up and brazenly political. But he faces 10 years in jail if convicted, and even if acquitted, would be disqualified from running for high office.

The same holds true for Sergei Udaltsov, a left-wing activist who’s currently under house arrest for organizing "mass disorder" one year ago. The Kremlin’s legal team is putting the finishing touches on a case against Udaltsov that could lead to a treason conviction. It centers around a state TV documentary which apparently shows him and two other activists in conversation with an official from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. 

Mikhail Metzel / AP file

A wounded opposition protester winces in pain during a rally in Moscow on May 6, 2012.

Udaltsov is allegedly heard on tape asking for funds to finance the overthrow of the Russian government. Udaltsov says the footage is a "sham." But now he, too, faces up to 10 years in prison.

“Russia has increasingly evolved as a police state,” said Maria Lipman, current head of the Carnegie Center in Moscow. “Detention and prosecution should be seen as the government’s warning:  Beware – if you want to take part in street activism you may have to pay with your freedom.”

The result could be seen in Monday’s lifeless protest on Bolotnaya Square. On the one hand, many protesters – the ones who bothered to come out – seemed intimidated by the riot police who surrounded them.

Most were quiet and looked apprehensive. Others appeared to burn with rage. Putin, on the other hand, secure in his ownership of all the levers of power, completely ignored the demonstration.

“Putin has full control of all the resources,” Lipman added. “From economic to political to the police, to the courts, to the intelligence services. [It’s why] there hasn’t been a single time when anybody ‘elite,’ from big business or high office, has switched sides and joined the protesters.”

Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters

Supporters of Vladimir Putin wave flags during a rally in central Moscow on May 6, 2012.

Some who took the stage on the square held banners calling for the release of their comrades from prison. A year ago, there was heady talk of the “beginning of the end” of Putin and Putinism – which, in one phrase, translates, “stay out of my way and I’ll make it worthwhile.”

Educated, urban Russians were crying out for dignity, respect and civil society back then, which they believed they had earned with their relative prosperity.  But, one year into his third term, Putin’s ratings are still in the soaring 60s. And his rural, blue-collar supporters know full well who’s the boss.

Meawhile, some analysts – and some protesters themselves – say their biggest mistake was thinking that their moment of opposition was a movement.  

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered the former Soviet Union and Russia since the 1980s.

Related:

Full Russia coverage from NBC News

Yuri Kadobnov / AFP - Getty Images file

A woman holds a leaflet, reading "For human rights" and featuring a picture of Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny, during an opposition rally in Moscow on April 17.

Vladimir Putin's Russia has launched an "unprecedented" crackdown on political activists and civil society groups, Human Rights Watch alleged in a report released Wednesday.

The New York-based group’s report described a "nationwide campaign" of harassment and intimidation by the former KGB officer's government.

It came on the day Putin critic Alexei Navalny urged a court to throw out what he said were trumped-up charges intended to silence him. It also comes weeks after the State Department cataloged a series of human concerns in Russia, including restrictions to harsh fines for unsanctioned political meetings, electoral fraud and the detention and trial of citizens without due process.

The HRW report, "Laws of Attrition: The Crackdown on Russia’s Civil Society after Putin’s Return to the Presidency," said:

• Putin’s government has sought to portray critics as "clandestine enemies" 
• a number of political activists have been jailed 
• and a series of restrictive laws, including one against treason that could criminalize international human rights campaigners and others that impose "draconian limits on association with foreigners," have been passed.

It also said that hundreds of organizations had been subjected to "intrusive" inspections about a raft of matters such as tax affairs, fire safety and air quality.

In one case, the report said a group was asked for chest X-rays of its staff to ensure they did not have tuberculosis. In another, officials demanded copies of speeches made at a group's meetings.

"Taken together, the laws and government actions described in this report violate Russia’s international legal obligations to protect freedom of association, expression, and assembly and threaten the viability of Russia’s vibrant civil society," the report said.

Nikolay Petrov, scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, echoed the HRW findings, saying the democratic climate in Russia has got “much worse” over the past year.

“At first, these new laws were portrayed as something that would only be used as a threat, not a tool that would actually be used,” he said. “Now we are seeing these laws used a lot to target [non-profit] organizations and protests.

“Huge numbers of law enforcement officers are now involved” in the clampdown against political opponents and rights groups, he added.

Sergei Chirikov / EPA file

Russian police officers make their way through a crowd to detain opposition activists in Moscow last month.

“It is important for all democracies to be aware of what is going on in Russia.”

The HRW report cited two cases as "further examples of Russia’s waning commitment to its international human rights obligations": The two-year prison sentences given to two members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot for a political stunt in a Moscow cathedral and the fate of Leonid Razvozzhaev, a political activist accused of organizing a riot who attempted to claim asylum in neighboring Ukraine.

Razvozzhaev went missing in Ukraine after stepping outside the office of a partner organization of the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees "to take a break during an asylum interview."

"Several days later he reappeared in custody in Russia. Razvozzhaev appears to have been forcibly disappeared and was forced to sign a confession under duress while in incommunicado detention. Razvozzhaev is in custody awaiting trial in Russia," the report said.

In response to the State Department comments earlier this month, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing the United States of politicizing human rights issues, according to Reuters.

"Americans prefer not to recall their own record (of violations)," the statement said, adding that Washington has recently resorted to disproportionate use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing civilian casualties, Reuters said.

On Wednesday, a court in the industrial city of Kirov adjourned to consider Navalny’s request to throw out charges that he stole $500,000 from a state-run timber firm, The Associated Press reported.

The most prominent opposition leader to be tried in post-Soviet Russia, Navalny has suggested Putin ordered the charges trial to stop his criticism of "swindlers and thieves" in government and sideline him as a potential presidential rival.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related: 

Full Russia coverage from NBC News

France became the 14th country in the world to allow same-sex couples to wed Tuesday, when its parliament approved a law that has sparked often violent street protests and a rise in homophobic attacks.

Lawmakers in the lower house National Assembly, where President Francois Hollande’s Socialists have an absolute majority, passed the bill by 331 votes for and 225 against.

The law also allows same-sex couples to adopt children.

“I hope people across the country will celebrate this moment,” Martin Gaillard, a 31-year-old advocate of gay marriage, told English-language news site France24.com.

Opponents of the law have held increasingly angry protests in recent weeks, including a string of confrontations with police in Paris.

They fought hard to scuttle the parliamentary bill because it also allows the use of surrogate motherhood by gay couples wanting children.

The debate is also blamed for fanning a spate of homophobic attacks, including the beating up of a 24-year-old in the southern city of Nice on Saturday, Reuters reported.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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This story was originally published on Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:33 AM EDT

MADRID - Spain's official population fell last year for the first time since records began as immigrants fled a five-year on-and-off recession that has sent unemployment soaring.

The number of residents fell by 206,000 to 47.1 million, the National Statistics Institute said on Monday, a figure entirely accounted for by the fall in the number of registered foreign residents.

It was the first time a population drop had been recorded in official statistics since records began in 1857 - although until 1998 figures were published roughly every decade, rather than annually.

Spain and the rest of Southern Europe are suffering twin economic and fiscal crises.

During a long economic boom that ended abruptly in 2008, Spanish-speaking immigrants from Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia flocked to Spain to work in construction. Between 2000 and 2010, the immigrant population swelled from 924,000 to 5.7 million.

But building has come to a standstill since a housing bubble burst, and a government spending squeeze to try to meet strict deficit cutting targets imposed by Brussels has further strained the economy. As the unemployment rate has soared to 26 percent, many immigrants have returned home.

The biggest fall in registered foreign residents was among South Americans, especially Ecuadoreans and Colombians, the statistics agency said.

"There was extraordinary growth (in immigrants) from 2000 to 2009, which is reversing quickly due to the economic crisis," demographer Albert Esteve of the Barcelona Centre for Demographic Studies told Spain National Radio.

"Spain is less attractive because there are no jobs."

Spain's two largest groups of immigrants, Romanians and Moroccans, both shrank last year.

Not only are immigrants returning home; many Spaniards are also leaving to look for work abroad. The youth unemployment rate is higher than 50 percent.

The population of native Spaniards grew last year by 10,000, a smaller increase than in recent years, only minimally offsetting a fall of 216,000 in the number of registered foreigners. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Guillaume Horcajuelo / EPA

Jean Claude Mas, former head of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), smokes a cigarette Wednesday during a break on the first day of his trial in Marseille, southern France.

MARSEILLE, France -- Five French executives faced jeers from victims Wednesday as they went on trial accused of  supplying women with hundreds of thousands of substandard breast implants and triggering a global health scare.

More than 300,000 women around the world were fitted over a decade with implants from the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), and the trial includes 5,000 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers.

PIP's founder and chief executive, 73-year-old Jean-Claude Mas, has admitted filling the implants with an unapproved homemade recipe made of industrial-grade silicone gel.

Mas and four PIP executives, including the chief financial officer, are charged with aggravated fraud and risk maximum prison terms of five years each, plus fines, for selling the implants around the world from 2001 to 2010, when they were ordered off the market.

A vast exhibition building close to PIP's former premises has been set up as a makeshift courtroom to accommodate the huge crowds expected for the trial, due to last until May 14.

Mas arrived at court under police escort and faced a crush of cameras as the trial began in the southern city of Marseille.

"Bastard!" shouted someone in the audience of some 300 victims as Mas appeared live on a giant video screen.

Of the more than 5,000 individual lawsuits filed against PIP -- once the world's third-largest supplier of breast implants -- and its executives, 220 have come from women outside France.

A French woman who alleges that one of her PIP implants began to leak four years after their insertion said outside the courtroom that victims were both scared and angry.

"We had foreign bodies put inside us that were flawed ... we could have maybe died from it. The anger is because we were tricked," said Tomassine Catalano. "It's frightening."

Rush for removal
The scandal -- revealed after inspectors pursuing a tip-off discovered vats of industrial-grade silicone outside the PIP factory in 2010 -- sparked worldwide panic when the government recommended removal of the implants due to an abnormally high rupture rate.

Health experts say no link has been established between PIP implants and breast cancer, but in the months after the scandal broke, plastic surgeons around the world reported a flood of removal requests from worried patients.

Half the French women with PIP implants, or nearly 15,000, have already opted for removal, whether because of rupture or as a precaution, according to the government.

Mas was released in October from eight months in detention following a failure to post bail. He told police that 75 percent of PIP's implants had contained the homemade gel, which was never been approved by regulators, although he denies it was unsafe. He and the other executives deny the charges.

Investigators estimate that Mas's formula allowed PIP to save nearly $1.6 million in one year alone.

On Wednesday, hoots erupted in court when Mas said he lived on a modest monthly retirement income of $2,350, prompting the judge to warn that the next person to disrupt proceedings would be thrown out.

Minutes before the trial began, a court in Paris rejected a defense request to have the case thrown out.

Mas and CFO Claude Couty are separately implicated in a civil case over fiscal fraud that has yet to reach trial. Mas is also under investigation for manslaughter following a complaint from the mother of a French woman with PIP implants who died of cancer in 2010.

Related:

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Two people were arrested in Britain Thursday over an assault on an "emo" teenager -- the first such move after police began recording attacks on subculture members as “hate crimes.”

The term, short for “emotive” or “emotional,” usually refers to an introspective style of music -- somewhere between punk and grunge -- and its associated fashion styles.

Earlier this month, Greater Manchester Police became the first force in the U.K. to treat attacks on groups such as goths, emos and punks in the same way as crimes based on race, religion, disability or sexual orientation.

The 16-year-old victim was “distinctively dressed as an emo” in an eastern suburb of the northern England city when he was punched in the face Monday evening, the Manchester Evening News newspaper said.

The victim “describes himself as an emo,” police said in a statement, adding that officers had arrested a 14-year-old boy and a 44-year-old man over the attack.

“The assault has been reported as an alternative subculture hate crime and will be investigated as such,” the statement added.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said the injured teen was hit "several times."

Garry Shewan, assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said:  "It is unfortunate that this incident happened, but the fact we were able to identify this as a hate crime is very positive. Just last Thursday we announced that we will now record alternative subculture as a hate motivation."

Lancashire Police / PA via AP

Sophie Lancaster was fatally attacked in a park in Lancashire, northern England, because of her goth appearance in 2007.

"We hope this encourages victims to continue to come forward so we can take positive action against offenders," he added.

In England, a hate crime is defined by prosecutors as “a criminal offense motivated by prejudice based on a person's disability, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.”

The decision by police to include subcultures was partly a result of the 2007 killing of Sophie Lancaster, a 20-year-old in the northern England county of Lancashire, who was kicked and stamped to death for being a goth.

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Jacques Brinon / AP

A visitor stands in front of the closed Louvre museum Paris, France, Wednesday.

PARIS - Tourists caught no glimpse of the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory or Venus de Milo on Wednesday due to a one-day closure of the Louvre, as guards protested that pickpockets were rampant at the world's most visited museum. 

Two hundred museum guards exercised their right to a work stoppage, forcing the museum to shut its doors for the day, union representatives said. 

The CGT union said guards were "fed up" by attacks and threats directed at them and visitors over the past few months by pickpockets.

The secretary general of the national union for museums (SNMD), David Maillard, said petty thieves were multiplying at the site, visited by nearly 9 million people each year.

"There are thefts and threats every day. The guards are fed up with being assaulted by pickpockets," Maillard told Reuters, adding that the unions want better security at the museum.

The Louvre, which confirmed the closure on its website, could not be immediately reached for comment, but unions said the museum would reopen on Thursday.

Paris police regularly patrol the city's most crowded tourist sites, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.

But thieves who often operate in organised gangs are a constant frustration for authorities as they are easily able to exploit tourists and can lose themselves in crowds.

Many of those arrested do not hold French nationality or are minors, complicating judicial pursuit. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Koen Verheijden / AFP - Getty Images file

Employees at Willy Selten Meat Wholesale in Oss, Netherlands, work on Feb. 15 after Dutch officials raided the factory believed to be mixing horse and beef and selling it as pure beef. On Wednesday, the Dutch government ordered it and another company to withdraw 55,000 tons of meat from the market.

AMSTERDAM -- Dutch food safety authorities have ordered the Europe-wide withdrawal of 55,000 tons of beef from sale over concerns that it might contain horse.

The Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority said in a statement on Wednesday it had told more than 130 Dutch processing firms to trace the meat, all of which had come from two Dutch wholesalers, and withdraw it.

The wholesalers involved were Wiljo Import and Export and Willy Selten Meat Wholesale.

"It might contain traces of horse meat, but we don't know for certain at the moment if this is the case," said a spokeswoman for the authority.

Inspectors examining Willy Selten's records had found that the origin of the meat it supplied was unclear, the authority said.

The authority said that meant it was impossible to confirm that slaughterhouses had been acting according to procedure. It said it did not know where the meat had ended up, but it could have been used in frozen products.

"The buyers have probably already processed the meat and sold it on," it said in a statement.

"They, in turn, are obliged to inform their own customers."

About 370 companies in other European countries have bought the meat, and the Dutch food authority has warned foreign counterparts about the recall via a European rapid alert system, it said.

It said there was no immediate suggestion of any danger to human health.

In January, tests in Ireland revealed that some beef products contained horse, triggering recalls of ready-made meals in several countries and damaging confidence in Europe's vast and complex food industry.

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Dmitry Astakhov / Ria Novosti via Reuters

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stands in his office in Moscow on April 9, 2013, before an interview with a Russian television channel.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin continued a European trip marked by protest, his successor as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was left looking rather wistful at his office back in Moscow Tuesday.

Since Putin and Medvedev swapped jobs in May last year, the latter has found himself out of the limelight and has even found time to indulge his passion for photography.

NPR's Moscow correspondent Corey Flintoff reported earlier this month that Medvedev appears increasingly isolated from the center of power and may have been the target of a campaign to wreck his reputation.

Putin, who was confronted by topless protesters in Germany on Monday, faced further demonstrations in the Netherlands, where 1,000 gay rights activists waved pink and orange balloons and blasted out dance music to condemn Russia's treatment of homosexuals. 

AFP - Getty Images, RIA Novosti via AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin had a busy day Monday: (clockwise from top left) Sitting in a Volkswagen XL 1 Hybrid car in Hanover, Germany; laughing with German Chancellor Angela Merkel; arriving at Schiphol airport in The Netherlands; drinking a toast with Dutch Queen Beatrix at the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam.

Robin Utrecht / EPA

Demonstrators participate in a protest near the National Maritime Museum, where Putin was having dinner, in Amsterdam on April 8, 2013. The protesters were denouncing a so-called 'homosexual propaganda ban' in Russia which was enacted in January.

Previously on PhotoBlog: On holiday with Putin and Medvedev

David Moir / Reuters

A man attends a gathering of people celebrating the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, in George Square in Glasgow, Scotland on April 8, 2013.

Sang Tan / AP

Anti-Thatcher protesters gather at Trafalgar Square in London on April 8, 2013.

Danny E. Martindale / Getty Images

People cheer in front of a banner displaying the message 'The Witch is Dead' in Brixton, south London, on April 8, 2013.

Controversial in life, Britain's ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher continued to divide a nation in death, with somber plans for a funeral and eulogies rejected by some in favor of celebrations and parties, Reuters reports. 

Her radical, right-wing policies, credited by some with modernizing Britain, alienated many, who saw her as a destroyer of jobs and traditional industries.

In Brixton, south London, a banner with the message "The Witch is Dead" was erected above a pub as a hastily convened party gathered pace. 

"Thatcher herself, she represents so much of what people hate about what has happened to Britain in the last 20, 30 years," said 40-year-old graphic designer Ben Windsor.

Police said there was "low level disorder" in Brixton, and six officers were hurt in Bristol after a street party there, ITV News reported.

David Moir / Reuters

Revelers spray champagne in George Square, Glasgow, on April 8, 2013.

More than 200 people gathered in a city square in Glasgow, Scotland, where revelers sprayed champagne and danced as a bagpiper played. 

"We are here because Thatcher's legacy is one of poverty and oppression and it is important that she is remembered for those reasons," Jonathon Shafi told Glasgow's Herald newspaper.

Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

Members of the public dance to mark the death of Baroness Margaret Thatcher on April 8, 2013 in Glasgow.

Peter MacDiarmid / Getty Images

A pint of milk is left outside the residence of Baroness Thatcher in Chester Square, London, on April 8, 2013.

Back in London, a pint of milk was placed on the doorstep of Thatcher's home, a reference to her policy of scrapping free milk for primary school children while head of education in the 1970s, a move which earned her the moniker "Thatcher the milk snatcher."

-- Reuters contributed to this report

Slideshow: The life and times of Margaret Thatcher

John Minihan / Getty Images

A pioneer for her sex, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the United Kingdom for almost 12 years. Take a look back at her life and career.

Launch slideshow

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Jochen Luebke / EPA

An eye-opening experience for Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) as he is confronted by a topless demonstrator during a tour of the Hanover Fair in Hanover, Germany, on April 8, 2013. He was accompanied by German Chancellor Angela Merkel (center right) and Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn (extreme right).

Russian President Vladimir Putin laughed off a protest against him by topless women in Germany on Monday, joking that he liked what he had seen while sharply rebuffing German criticism of his human rights record.

Three members of the women's rights group Femen, which has staged protests against Russia's detention of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot around Europe, disrupted his visit to a trade fair in the German city of Hanover focusing on Russian business.

They stripped to the waist and shouted slogans calling the Russian leader a "dictator" before being covered up and bundled away by security men.

Julian Schultenschulte / EPA

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchange glances after the incident involving topless demonstrators.

Jochen Luebke / EPA

Security staff stop another topless demonstrator at the Volkswagen stand at the Hanover Fair.

"Regarding this performance, I liked it," grinned Putin at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, adding that it had helped to promote the trade fair though he suggested that the security men could have been "gentler".

"I did not catch what they were shouting, I did not even see if they were blondes, brunettes or chestnut-haired ... I don't see anything terrible in (the protest), though I think ... it is better to be dressed if one wants to discuss political matters." Read the full story.

Jochen Luebke / AFP - Getty Images

A demonstrator is held by security staff.

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This story was originally published on Mon Apr 8, 2013 9:12 AM EDT

Pope Francis called for worldwide efforts towards peace in his first Easter Sunday address, urging leaders to find diplomatic solutions in Syria and North Korea.

In his first "Urbi et Orbi" message from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, he also asked for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians solutions to conflicts in several African countries.

Earlier this month, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina stood on the same balcony after being elected as the first pope from the Americas in more than 1,300 years.

Francis, who has emphasized a humbler style to the papacy, said: "Peace to the whole world, torn apart by violence linked to drug trafficking and by the iniquitous exploitation of natural resources! Peace to this our Earth! May the risen Jesus bring comfort to the victims of natural disasters and make us responsible guardians of creation.”

Christopher Furlong / Getty Images

Pope Francis greets the faithful prior to his first 'Urbi et Orbi' blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, Sunday.

He added: “Peace in Iraq, that every act of violence may end, and above all for dear Syria, for its people torn by conflict and for the many refugees who await help and comfort.  How much blood has been shed!  And how much suffering must there still be before a political solution to the crisis will be found?”

Slideshow: The election of Pope Francis

/

Cardinals from around the world gathered in the Vatican to elect the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

Launch slideshow

Earlier, the pontiff strode onto a flower-bedecked esplanade facing St Peter’s Square, into which tens of thousands of faithful had gathered from early Sunday, to lead the traditional open-air Mass.

Francis bowed his head in reflection as the Gospel was sung in Latin, The Associated Press reported, recounting what Christians believe is the central mystery of their faith — the resurrection of Jesus after this death by crucifixion.

"Let the risen Jesus enter your life,” the pope told worshippers before the service via his Twitter account. "He will receive you with open arms."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related: The evolution of the Popemobile

This story was originally published on Sun Mar 31, 2013 5:08 AM EDT