As he has done every Easter, Francis called for peace in the Middle East, his appeal made more urgent by recent violence in Jerusalem and cross-border exchanges of fire involving Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
The visuals are the work of San Francisco-based photographer , 31, who was inspired to visit the remote country after watching Lord of the Rings as a child, with the trilogy filmed on both the North and South islands.
Allied nations, such as South Korea, have also reportedly been the subject of spying by the Pentagon, raising questions as to the diplomatic impact the leak could have at a time of deteriorating global ties.
Between the Mass and his reading of the message, Francis, appearing in fine form, was driven in a popemobile around the square and down the main boulevard leading to the River Tiber so more people could see him.
The video, which has been viewed more than 80,000 times, captures some of the country's most jaw-dropping sites including the snowy crest of Mount Cook, the majesty of Milford Sound, the dinosaur egg-like Moeraki Boulders on the Otago coast and the famed willow tree leaning over Lake Wanaka.
On Sunday he asked God to "comfort the wounded and all those who have lost loved ones because of the war, and grant that prisoners may return safe and sound to their families. Open the hearts of the entire international community to strive to end this war and all conflict and bloodshed in our world."
"The disparity in measures in comparison to Palestine, Syria or any other non-Western conflict reinforces that inequality and discrimination of tech platforms is a feature, not a bug," said Fatafta, policy manager for the Middle East and North Africa.
The group helped the Ukrainian relatives of children who had been taken to Russia with the logistics, transport and planning needed to embark on the long journey to fetch their children and bring them back.
"Meta must have a strict policy on hate speech regardless of the country and situation - I don't think deciding whether to allow promoting hate or calls for violence on a case-by-case basis is acceptable," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In recent days, photos that were posted to several social media platforms showed the documents as if someone had taken them from a secure area, unfolded them from their pocket and quickly took pictures of the papers, an official said.
Aric Toler, head of research and training at the Bellingcat investigative consortium, said Saturday that the photos were posted by the Thug Shaker Central on Discord, but DailyMail.com was unable to find the group on on the platform Saturday.
"Now the fifth rescue mission is nearing its completion. It was special regarding the number of children we managed to return and also because of its complexity," said Mykola Kuleba, the founder of the Save Ukraine humanitarian organisation.
In Ukraine, the documents suggested a misalignment between US and Ukrainian military strategies, with intelligence reports appearing to show the US continues to spy on top military and political leaders in the region.
Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer from a Ukrainian NGO called Regional Centre for Human Rights, told the briefing they were collecting evidence to build a case that Russian officials deliberately prevented return of the Ukrainian children back to their country.
'It kind of warms your heart when you go to a place where people genuinely want to have a conversation with you and want to know who you are. It's very different from what I'm used to, living in a place like San Francisco, where people just kind of do their own thing and you go about your business.
And the US also learned that South Korea was nervous about arming Ukraine, suggesting the CIA is receiving information from foreign diplomats about high-level private chats taking place among their governments.
Moscow has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia from occupied areas, but presents this it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
"When they can make certain decisions unilaterally, they can basically promote propaganda, hate speech, sexual violence, human trafficking, slavery and other forms of human abuse related content - or prevent it," he said.
American officials told the New York Times that while the leak underscores the Pentagon's capacity to collect information on Russia's strategies, it remains to be seen whether their sources of information will be hampered by the revelations.
He recalls: 'It was bittersweet in a sense because the weather was so tough to deal with that the wind, I mean, there were 60mph winds at times where you could barely stand up... you could barely set up a camera. And it rained, I think, every single day that I was there, for about two weeks.
'There was a lot of just sitting out in the rain, but then there would be little parts in the cloud and then a rainbow would form out of nowhere. And it would sit there for maybe 10 minutes. The light would cascade across the landscape. And then the storm would come back 10 minutes later and we would be in a torrential downpour again.'