Pope Francis was due on Thursday to celebrate a sombre pandemic-era Christmas Eve Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, with a restricted audience and other anti-coronavirus precautions. The service was due to take place two hours earlier than normal, at 7:30 pm (1830 GMT), so that it could finish before Italian curfew rules kick in at 10 pm. A far smaller than usual number of members of the clergy and the public was due to take part in an event usually attended by hundreds of people. Before the Mass, the pope sent messages to the people of Lebanon and to the leaders of South Sudan, wishing both troubl…