On Saturday evening Pope Francis will celebrate the main Easter Vigil Mass in St Peter's Basilica.
For his part, Pope Francis will begin the Church's most important liturgical season on Sunday with a Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter's Square.
In a homily at his final Ash Wednesday mass in Saint Peter's basilica earlier in the month, he said the Catholic Church had been "defiled" by internal divisions, and suggested that he had been surrounded by "too much individualism and personal rivalry".
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But the Mass was relocated to St Peter's to accommodate the crowds, the Vatican said.
The 85-year-old pontiff delivered a prayer for peace to the crowd in St Peter's Square after his homily at Mass.
Peter's Basilica was somber during the Mass, as if the weight of Benedict's decision and the finality of his pontificate had finally registered with the thousands of faithful present.
Instead, as Pope Francis, will celebrate Mass on Holy Thursday in St Peter's Basilica, and will wash the feet of prisoners in a youth detention centre in Rome, continuing a pre-Easter practice he began while archbishop of Buenos Aires.
It said that Pope Francis would also celebrate Mass earlier on Holy Thursday in St Peter's Basilica.
BBC: Pope Francis to wash feet of prisoners in pre-Easter Mass
Peter's Basilica, where they celebrated a Mass "for electing the Roman pontiff, " a ceremony that sets the tone for cardinals voting in the conclave.
The elusive particle is part of a theory first proposed by physicist Peter Higgs and others in the 1960s to explain how particles obtain mass.
The Roman Catholic Church leader spoke at a Mass in the Vatican, then greeted a crowd outside St Peter's Basilica.
Peter's Basilica, hundreds gathered around video screens that had broadcast a Mass held earlier.
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Later on his first full day in the new job, Pope Francis was due to celebrate Mass with cardinals, reading portions of the books of Isaiah, Matthew and Peter.
Being able to prove a business concept in a hurry, even if the product isn't perfect, is especially attractive to investors, says Peter Bell, general partner with Highland Capital Partners, a venture firm in Lexington, Mass. that staked Digg, Mapquest and Ask Jeeves.
Prof Peter Higgs developed a theory of how other sub-atomic particles came to have substance, or mass, and published his work in 1964.
Peter had trained as a Presbyterian minister but took a job preaching at a small Congregational church in Milton, Mass.
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