L’AQUILA, Italy – Sobbing mourners gazed at coffins adorned with mementos of the dead — a boy’s toy motorcycle, a baby’s blue T-shirt — as they bade farewell Friday to some 200 of Italy’s quake victims at an open-air funeral Mass.

Pope Benedict XVI urged survivors to keep up hope in a message delivered on his behalf at the special Good Friday Mass.

The 6.3-magnitude quake — Italy’s worst in three decades, which killed 289 and left some 30,000 homeless — struck Monday at the start of Holy Week, heightening the sense of suffering in this deeply Roman Catholic country.

“This is the time to work together,” the pope said in a message read by his secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein. “Only solidarity will allow us to overcome this painful trial.”

Weeping mourners in the front row bowed their heads, their shoulders shaking as they sobbed. A few ran their fingers on the caskets neatly lined up on the vast military ground in the quake-stricken city of L’Aquila. Others stared out blankly at the sea of flowers.

Firefighters, rangers and other rescue workers stood solemnly, their hands clasped in front of them. At least 10 mourners fainted during the ceremony, according to a doctor at the scene.

Amid the rows of coffins, five small white caskets of the youngest victims rested on those of their parents. On them rested mementos of short lives: a boy’s toy motorcycle and a baby’s powder blue T-shirt with a Tweetie Bird design.

Twenty children and teenagers were among the dead. The youngest victim would have turned 5 months on Easter Sunday.

The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, presided over the Good Friday funeral Mass for about 200 of the dead. Some of the 289 victims had already been buried privately. Two bodies were found in the rubble as officials prepared for the funeral.

Speaking of the upcoming Easter Sunday celebration, Bertone told the mourners: “It will be your Easter, an Easter which will be born once again from the rubble of a people who have suffered so many times in its history.”

An imam briefly took the stage to address the relatives of an unknown number of Muslim victims. He also offered encouragement to all the mourners, who quietly applauded when he finished speaking.

After the service ended, uniformed police officers and rescue workers, some in bright orange uniforms, slowly carried the wooden caskets from the military ground and loaded them into long, silver-colored hearses. Many were going directly to cemeteries for burial.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi and other government officials were among the 10,000 people at the outdoor ceremony beneath Abruzzo’s snowcapped mountains. The funeral was being held outdoors because none of the region’s churches was stable enough for the ceremony.

Berlusconi — who has won praise for his compassionate handling of the crisis — comforted mourners, shaking hands and giving hugs. Berlusconi told one young mourner kneeling before a relative’s casket to “keep your chin up,” according to the news agency ANSA.

“How can one not be moved by so much pain?” Berlusconi said, shortly before departing for L’Aquila for the funeral.

Friday was declared a national day of mourning and many shops across the country were closed during the service.

Volunteers guided grieving relatives to the caskets of their loved ones. Each of the simple varnished wooden coffins, graced with either a cross or a crucifix and with a bouquet of flowers, bore a golden plaque with the name of the deceased, the dates of birth and death.

A woman mourned at a casket draped in soccer jerseys and holding the silver-framed photo of a smiling young man with thick blond hair.

The Vatican granted a special dispensation for the Mass. Good Friday, which marks Jesus’ death by crucifixion, is the only day in the year on which Mass in not normally celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church.

Benedict, who noted that the quake was felt at the Vatican, is to travel to the region sometime after the Easter holiday.

“Today is a ‘Via Crucis’ for each of us,” said Stefania Pezzopane, one of the top officials of this medieval city in central Italy. The “Via Crucis,” or “Way of the Cross,” is the procession held on Good Friday in commemoration of Jesus’ suffering before crucifixion.

The quake struck Monday at 3:32 a.m. while many slept. It reduced entire blocks to piles of rubble. L’Aquila was among the hardest hit, but the quake damaged some 26 towns in the central mountainous region of Abruzzo.

On Thursday, L’Aquila took a halting step toward normalcy as butchers, bakers and other shopkeepers reopened for business and firefighters began entering buildings to grab essential items for the homeless.

Aftershocks, including some strong ones, continued to rattle residents — nearly 18,000 of whom are living in tent camps around the stricken region. An additional 10,000 have been put up in seaside hotels, out of the quake zone, and the Italian railway provided heated sleeping cars at L’Aquila’s main train station, where nearly 700 people spent the night.

Firefighters surveyed for damage as far away as Rome, 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of the quake’s epicenter.

By Ariel David, Vanessa Gera

ROME – Italian authorities have started fingerprinting tens of thousands of Gypsies living in nomad camps across the country — adults and children alike — brushing aside accusations of racism by human rights advocates and international organizations.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told parliament this week the move was needed to fight crime and identify illegal immigrants for expulsion, but also to improve the lives of those legally living in the makeshift, often unsanitary camps.

“We intend to make a census to see who lives in Gypsy camps, who has a right to stay and to live in humane conditions. Those who don’t have a right to stay will be repatriated,” he said.

More than 700 encampments have been built, mainly around Rome, Milan and Naples, populated almost entirely by Gypsies, also known as Roma.

The measure by Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government, part of the government’s crackdown on street crime, has provoked a storm of protests at home and abroad. Officials have spoken recently of a “Roma emergency” in Italy’s big cities, blaming them for rising crime.

Maroni, a leading member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, said the census will be completed in October. Critics, including the center-left opposition, claim the measure is not a census and is unfairly singling out a minority. Italy has an overall population census every ten years that does not include fingerprinting.

The Interior Ministry said prints will only be taken from people who do not have a valid Italian or EU document, which would exempt Gypsies who come from EU member Romania. Maroni said Red Cross members would be present to ensure that the rights of the Roma are respected.

Maroni contended the fingerprinting would be especially beneficial to Roma children whose parents send them to beg or steal instead of going to school. He said those children will be removed from their parents’ custody.

Charges of discrimination have rained in from international groups including the U.N.’s Children Fund and the Council of Europe. The Italian chapter of Amnesty International called the move “discriminatory, disproportionate and unjustified.”

“Checks targeting a specific minority and affecting that minority, including its most vulnerable members, are discriminatory,” organization said.

Italian newspapers published photos of gloved officials taking prints from the ink-stained hands of Gypsies living in Naples — and reported Thursday that fingerprinting would begin in Rome next week.

Some authorities were also identifying those fingerprinted by their religion and ethnicity. A Catholic lay organization, the Sant’Egidio Community, distributed what it said were census papers from Naples on Thursday, which included fields listing religion and ethnicity.

“I won’t call it a racist measure, but the fact that a country that belongs to the G-8 and the European Union is discriminating against people on the basis of ethnicity is unacceptable,” Marco Impagliazzo, Sant’Egidio’s president, told a news conference.

The EU parliament will debate the issue next week, but EU officials have been cautious in their comments.

“I don’t fully understand all aspects of the Italian proposals,” EU Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said Wednesday. “However, it is clear that in Europe it would be impossible to grant rights to certain citizens and not grant them to others based on their ethnic origin.”

Italians, and others in Europe, have a long history of distrust of Gypsies.

In Naples, camps had to be evacuated in May after attackers set huts on fire and angry residents in neighboring areas protested against the alleged attempt by a Gypsy woman to kidnap a baby.

Authorities in Rome have raided camps to check for proper papers and tear down illegal housing.