Monday, July 21, 2008

Pope warns Catholic youth of 'spiritual desert'

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged hundreds of thousands of young Catholics to beat back a "spiritual desert" spreading through the modern world as he closed Catholic World Youth Day in Australia.

The pope celebrated an open-air mass in Sydney that organisers said drew 400,000 worshippers in the climax of a week of prayer and pop concerts during which the pontiff made a historic apology for child sex abuse by clergy.

In his final mass, the pope said the worshippers' youthful energy helped reinvigorate the church and urged them to become "messengers of love" to counter a world that was increasingly spiritually barren.

"The world needs this renewal," he said. "In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading, an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair."

The pontiff, who has repeatedly railed against consumerism and greed through the week, again warned the pilgrims to avoid "the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deaden our souls and poison our relationships."

The mass came a day after the pontiff said he was "deeply sorry" for the "evil" of the sexual abuse of children by clergymen.

Bidding "arrivederci" to the massive crowd at Royal Randwick Racecourse, the pope announced that the next World Youth Day would be held in Madrid in 2011.

The racecourse was transformed into a sea of cheering and flag-waving Catholic devotees as the pope took to a special stage with arms upraised in greeting.

Before the mass the 81-year-old pope did a slow circuit of the racecourse, smiling and waving as mothers thrust babies up to the vehicle's large windows to bring their children closer to the papal aura.

Organisers and the Vatican released conflicting figures on the number of worshippers, with the Holy See putting the number at just 350,000.

But while it was clear attendance fell well short of the 500,000 predicted by organisers, Benedict said the entire event had been an unforgettable experience.

The German-born leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics arrived in Australia a week ago to preside over the biggest Christian gathering on earth and was given a rock-star-style official welcome Thursday.

The event's combination of religious services, music and barbecues drew around 223,000 pilgrims, replacing Sydney's easy-going pace with an atmosphere that combined football match fever with rock concert festiveness and religious fervour.

World Youth Day was launched in 1986 by the late pope John Paul II to help stem the flow of young Catholics away from the once-dominant church in an age of growing secularism in the western world.

But this year's celebrations were partly overshadowed by a scandal over the sexual abuse of children by some Catholic clergy that has rocked the global church for years.

Amid pressure from victims, the pope on Saturday apologised for abuse in the Australian church and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.

During a mass for local clergy, he expressed his shame and made his first direct and explicit apology to victims of paedophile priests.

"Here I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious (order members) in this country," Benedict said.

"I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering."

But activists dismissed the pontiff's apology before a group of bishops, seminarians and novices, saying he should have apologised in front of sex abuse victims.

"The pope is willing to meet all sorts of disadvantaged people, but not people who have been sexually abused by the church," said John McNally, 53, an abuse victim with the support group Broken Rites.

World Youth Day Coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher said the church took the issue seriously but was non-committal about whether the pope would meet any victims in Australia as he did in the United Sates in April.

"The pope's schedule as you know is very packed tonight," he said. "Even if he did meet a few victims like he did in the United States, there's still hundreds more out there."

The pontiff will fly out of Australia on Monday.
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