Pope Benedict XVI urged more than 150,000 followers at mass Sunday in the French shrine town of Lourdes to hold firm in their faith, telling them "love is stronger than evil."The 81-year-old pontiff celebrated an open-air mass to mark the 150th anniversary of what Roman Catholics believe were the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to a French peasant girl.
Under clear skies, the pontiff spoke from a white podium set up on a sprawling field near the grotto where the Madonna is said to have appeared 18 times to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.
The pope urged the faithful to adhere to the teachings of Mary that "tell us that there is a love in this world that is stronger than death, stronger than our weaknesses and sins."
"The power of love is stronger than the evil which threatens us," he said.
Singing hymns, tens of thousands of faithful, some wheelchair-bound or on stretchers, flocked for services at the prairie of the Lourdes sanctuary, one of the world's most revered Roman Catholic shrines.
The southwestern town in the foothills of the Pyrenees is a magnet for the sick and disabled in search of a miracle cure from the water of the grotto's springs.
On Saturday, 260,000 people attended mass in central Paris during which the pope appealed to young Catholics to shun the false "idols" of the modern world and told them not to be "afraid" of a religious life.
Benedict was to deliver an address to French bishops later Sunday to chart a course for Catholicism in a country facing a freefall in the number of churchgoers despite its deep Christian heritage.
Only 10 percent of Catholics say they attend mass regularly, according to a recent poll.
The leader of the world's one billion Catholics is making his first visit to France since his election in 2005.
For the German pope, the Lourdes visit is an opportunity to shed his image in France as a cold theologian lacking the charisma of his predecessor John Paul II."He is a man of great depth and I feel close to him," said Jeanne, 70, from Saint-Etienne, in central France. "He may not be as telegenic as John Paul, but he has a deep faith."
During an emotional visit to the shrine in 2004, a year before his death, John Paul declared himself "a sick man among the sick" as he struggled with advanced Parkinson's disease.
Benedict arrived Saturday for a pilgrimage to the town that draws six million people every year.
After visiting a church where Bernadette was baptised and the small room where her family lived in poverty, the pope went to the grotto of Massiabelle, kneeling in prayer before a statue of the Virgin.
He also drank a glass of water from the "miracle" springs that was presented to him by a young girl.
The pope has said the miracle of Lourdes resides more in the teachings of Mary, which brings "true spiritual healing."
Benedict is to lead a special mass on Monday dedicated to the sick before ending his pilgrimage at a hospital chapel where Bernadette received the sacrament of the first communion.
The pope arrived in Paris on Friday, meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has called for easing France's strict secularism defined in a 1905 law on the separation of church and state.
Sarkozy, a twice-divorced lapsed Catholic, broke a French taboo during a trip to the Vatican last year by calling for a "positive secularism" that would allow space for religion in public life.
The pope sought to build on Sarkozy's position, saying Europe faced "disaster" if it turned away from religion.
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(Source: AFP)