The Pope wished people a happy Christmas in Guarani, the language of the Indians of certain Amazonian regions of South America, for the first time yesterday.

This brought the total number of languages in which the pontiff greeted the world with his traditional Christmas message to 63, up from 62 last year.

The list includes such diverse tongues as Maori, Hebrew, Swahili, Armenian, Mongolian, Tamil, Kirundi and Kinyarwanda.

His address, known in Latin as Urbi et Orbi –to the city and the world – was transmitted by 57 television networks to 88 countries across the globe.

From a balcony high up in St Peter’s Basilica, and under a bright blue sky, the Pope addressed a crowd of about 40,000 people, many of whom were carrying small children on their shoulders. Below him, St Peter’s Square was decorated with a larger-than-life-size Nativity scene. A colourful phalanx of Swiss Guards stood on one side and a band of Italian carabinieri on the other.

The Pope said that the great light of the birth of Jesus was a light bearing peace.

He spoke out against “all forms of injustice and discrimination [that] are destroying the internal fabrics of many countries and embittering international relations.” He also noted: “Throughout the world the number of migrants, refugees and evacuees is also increasing because of frequent natural disasters, often caused by alarming environmental upheavals.”

The Pope said that, on this day of peace, his mind turned “especially to those places where the grim sound of arms continues to reverberate – to the tortured regions of Darfur, Somalia, the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia, to the whole of the Middle East, especially Iraq, Lebanon and the Holy Land. To Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. To the Balkans and to many other crisis situations that unfortunately are frequently forgotten.”

He called on the child Jesus to bestow upon political leaders the wisdom and courage to seek and find humane, just and lasting solutions to the troubles of the world.