VATICAN CITY, March 23: Pope Benedict called in his Easter message on Sunday for an end to injustice worldwide. He expressed joy at what he called continuing conversions to Christianity hours after he had baptised a prominent Italian Muslim convert. The Pope celebrated an Easter Mass for tens of thousands of people in driving rain in St Peter’s Square.

The mass came some 12 hours after an Easter vigil service on Saturday night where, in a surprise move, the pope baptised Muslim-born convert Magdi Allam, 55, an outspoken journalist and fierce critic of extremism.

The Egyptian-born Allam’s conversion — he took the name “Christian” for his baptism — was kept secret until the Vatican disclosed it in a statement less than an hour before the Saturday night service began.

Writing in Sunday’s edition of the leading Corriere della Sera, the newspaper of which he is a deputy director, Allam said he realised that he was in greater danger but he has no regrets.

Allam’s highly public baptism by the pope shocked Italy’s Muslim community, with some leaders openly questioning why the Vatican chose to highlight it.

“What amazes me is the high profile the Vatican has given this conversion,” Yaha Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, said: “Why could he have not done this in his local parish?”

In his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message delivered after the Mass, the pope decried “the many wounds that continue to disfigure humanity in our own day”.

He called for “an active commitment to justice ... in areas bloodied by conflict and wherever the dignity of the human person continues to be scorned and trampled,” mentioning Darfur, Somalia, the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon and Tibet. He then wished the world a happy Easter in 63 languages.—Reuters