Faithful push scandals and chaos aside to usher in Christmas
Pope opens holiday with sermon offering love to ‘even the worst’ as French mark first Christmas in over 200 years without fire-ravaged Notre Dame

Pope Francis ushered in Christmas celebrations for the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics on Tuesday, saying the celebration of Jesus’s birth reminded humanity how “God continues to love us all, even the worst of us.”
With a choir singing the classic Christmas hymn “The First Noel,” Francis proceeded down the center aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica late Tuesday and unveiled a statue of the newborn Jesus lying in a nativity scene at the foot of the altar.
Francis said the birth of Jesus, which Christians commemorate on Christmas Day, was a reminder of God’s unconditional love for everyone, “even the worst of us.”
“God does not love you because you think and act the right way,” he said. “You may have mistaken ideas, you may have made a complete mess of things, but the Lord continues to love you.”

At the same time though, he called for the faithful to allow themselves to be transformed by Jesus’ “crazy love” and to stop trying to change others.
“May we not wait for our neighbors to be good before we do good to them, for the church to be perfect before we love her, for others to respect us before we serve them. Let us begin with ourselves,” he said.
Francis has frequently emphasized his call for “personal conversion” in his reform-minded papacy, believing that true reform cannot be imposed from on high, but discerned from within. He has similarly denounced the “holier-than-thou” attitude of doctrinal and legal purists, who have chafed at his progressive openings to gays, divorcees and people on the margins.
Those critics have seized on the sexual abuse and financial scandals that have buffeted the papacy of the 83-year-old Jesuit pope.
The scandals are likely to follow Francis into 2020, with developments in a corruption investigation involving hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the Holy See and the release of a report on what the Vatican knew about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked for sexually abusing adults and minors,
Others also ushered in Christmas and battled less than ideal conditions.

In Bethlehem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the most senior Roman Catholic official in the Middle East, led hymns and said prayers at a midnight Mass.
“At Christmas all the world looks to us, to Bethlehem,” he said.
“Special greetings to our brothers and sisters in Gaza, with whom I celebrated Christmas two days ago,” he added.
Pizzaballa, who had to cross Israel’s security barrier to get from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, said after his arrival that it was a difficult time but there was reason for hope.
“We see in this period the weakness of politics, enormous economic problems, unemployment, problems in families,” he said.
“On the other side, when I visit families, parishes, communities, I see a lot of commitment… for the future. Christmas is for us to celebrate the hope.”
In her traditional Christmas Day message, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II was to describe 2019 as “quite bumpy” after a year of crises in the royal family.
In France, travelers were meanwhile facing more woe in the bitter nearly-three week strike by train drivers fighting government pension reform plans.
The walkout has ruined Christmas travel plans for tens of thousands of French ticket holders unable to reach loved ones in time for Christmas Day.
And French Catholics endured a sad moment as Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was unable to hold Christmas Eve Mass for the first time since 1803 — after a fire ravaged its structure in April.

Worshipers instead gathered at another church a few hundred meters away.
“It isn’t the same feeling but it’s still a Christmas Mass,” said 16-year-old Juliette, who had made the 700-kilometer trip from Aix with her family. “There will be a thought for Notre-Dame tonight, that’s for sure.”
There was chaos in Australian at a Sydney shopping mall where more than a dozen people were injured during the scramble for free gifts during a Christmas giveaway event. As hundreds of balloons containing gifts descended on a crowd below there was a sudden surge leading to injuries, ABC news reported.
GIVEAWAY GONE WRONG: More than a dozen shoppers were injured during a Christmas giveaway event at a mall in Australia.
Video shows a chaotic scene as hundreds of balloons containing free gifts dropped from above. https://t.co/A5l9ZWVZVI pic.twitter.com/Ger4z48fXd
— ABC News (@ABC) December 25, 2019
In Hong Kong chaos broke out in an upscale shopping center after pro-democracy protesters planned a series of Christmas Eve demonstrations.
And in the central Philippines, where Christmas is widely celebrated among the country’s Catholics, thousands of people were warned to leave their homes as a severe tropical storm approached.