Pope Urges Faithful to Build for ‘New Humanity’ : Easter: The worshipers in St. Peter’s Square are festive and fashionable. John Paul asks them to forsake materialism.

A gigantic crowd of festive worshipers thronged St. Peter’s Square on Sunday for the traditional Easter blessing from Pope John Paul II, who urged them to forsake greed and materialism and work peacefully together to build a new world, “a new creation for a new humanity.”

A pristine spring morning after weeks of unseasonable rain and cold lured families of Romans and busloads of foreign visitors to the cobblestone piazza facing the centerpiece basilica for the world’s 850 million Roman Catholics. It was the Vatican’s largest Easter parade in years, more than 100,000 by some estimates, spilling from the square onto the broad avenue leading from the nearby Tiber River.

Flanked by prelates of his church, the 71-year-old Pope celebrated a leisurely, opulent Mass on the steps of a basilica dressed with 100,000 flowers donated by growers in the Netherlands. Easter is the holiest and most joyous day in the church year: The belief that Jesus rose from the dead three days after his crucifixion is the essential mystery of Christianity.

“I wish you peace, real peace, the peace yearned for by the heart of every human being,” John Paul said after Mass from the central balcony of the basilica in his “Urbi et Orbi” message--”To the City and the World.”

“May this Easter wish reach those still fighting in certain regions of Africa, in the middle of Europe and in the Caucasus,” the pontiff said. “How can we fail to remember the tragedy through which the peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Nagorno-Karabakh are living?”

Arrayed like a tapestry in the piazza stood plumed Italian military honor guards, knights of the church with cocked hats and swords, the diplomatic corps in black, and pikemen of the Swiss Guard, wearing striped blue-and-orange uniforms that haven’t changed since the Renaissance.

John Paul read greetings in 56 languages. In English, he said, “A blessed Easter in the joy of Jesus Christ, the risen lord and savior of the world!”

There were tourists from Sweden and groups of nuns, French school children and masses of priests. Pilgrims waved flags. Doting fathers brought balloons. Young Italians preened in the most sought-after fashion this spring: team jackets bearing far-off names like Lakers and Browns, Giants and Celtics.

“What other truth could there be greater than this one, tha Christ died for the sins of all and that on the third day he rose again?” asked the Pope rhetorically in a message transmitted to more than 50 countries around the world.

The Polish-born Pope spoke most pointedly to Europe, where, he fears, common Christian roots and values risk being overwhelmed by a quest for wealth.

“Listen, I beg you,” he said, “to the voice of the one who has worked in you with great power. . . . He exhorts you to make the old Continent into a new reality. . . .”