Bethlehem Christmas joyful, crowded, rainy

Hundreds of worshippers, dressed in their holiday best and clutching umbrellas to shield them from a lashing rain, packed the church on Bethlehem's Manger Square Sunday to celebrate Christmas Mass at Jesus' traditional birthplace.

Inside St. Catherine's Church on Manger Square, worshippers - some dressed in the traditional attire of foreign lands - raised their voices in prayer, kissed a plaster statue of a baby Jesus and took communion. The church is attached to the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a grotto where devout Christians believe Jesus was born. (AP)