Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus and is the summit of the Catholic liturgical year. Its date is movable: in the Gregorian calendar it falls on the Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon following the March equinox. Vatican City follows that Western calculation. Easter is not named among Article 27's extra employee vacation days because Sunday is already the normal weekly rest day under Article 26 and canon law calls every Sunday the Church's primordial holy day.

At the Vatican, Easter morning is usually centred on a papal Mass in Saint Peter's Square, followed by the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the central loggia of Saint Peter's Basilica. These are liturgical and papal events rather than evidence that every Vatican institution shares one opening schedule. Tickets for a papal Mass, security screening and crowd-control arrangements are administered separately, while the blessing can generally be followed from the Square subject to capacity and police directions.

Easter Sunday also needs a precise administrative label. Article 27 of the Governorate's personnel regulation gives Vatican City State employees vacation on the listed additional days and incorporates Sundays and the holy days named by canon law; it is not a statute promising identical opening hours across every Holy See body. Essential, liturgical, security and visitor services may continue. Article 26 provides compensatory weekday rest when an employee must work on Sunday, but the regulation does not establish automatic Monday substitution whenever a feast falls at a weekend. The Vatican Museums, Saint Peter's Basilica, post office, pharmacies and papal events therefore publish their own operational notices.