At noon on Easter and Christmas, the Pope steps out on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica and delivers the Urbi et Orbi (“to the City of Rome and to the World”) address and blessing. I got to St. Peter’s Square a couple hours early thinking that the crowds would be insane, but, yet again, China had warped my expectations. (I did have a funny China flashback, however, bantering with the polizia at the security checkpoint when they warned me not to hit my head on the top of the metal detector.)
I arrived early enough to get one of the limited number of chairs immediately beneath the loggia. Although, yet again, Disney had warped my expectations through forced perspective and I thought I was going to be much closer to the Pope than I turned out to be.
Everyone, even the Swiss Guards, were in good spirits. 
Nearing noon, a band marched forward and arranged themselves with the guard under the loggia.
At the stroke of noon… 
…the curtains parted…
…and Pope Francis stepped out and waved to the cheering crowd. (Man, the Catholic Church has it dialed in on how to make an entrance.)
Other V.I.P.s (cardinals, presumably?) joined him on the loggia.
The pope read his blessing from a lectern. It lasted about twenty minutes. Couldn’t follow it, but I caught a lot of “pace” and a couple of “bambini”. 
There was some call-and-respsonse boilerplate and then the pope was (literally) “peace out”.
The bells of St. Peter’s rang like crazy.
I turned around afterward to find that St. Peter’s Square had filled out nicely. Based on this (and the Lindy Effect) I expect the Catholic Church will be sticking around for a while.