Pope’s New Year’s Eve message of mortality

Pope Francis has presided over a solemn prayer service in St Peter’s Basilica on New Year’s Eve, using his homily to stress life’s fleetingness.

He said: “How we like to be surrounded by so many fireworks, seemingly beautiful, but which in reality last only a few minutes.”

As humans, he said, there is a “time to be born and a time to die” and New Year’s also is a time to reflect on our mortality, “the end of the path of life”.