The pontiff was joined by more than 150,000 people who had come to mark the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to a French peasant girl.

Most Irish Catholic dioceses were represented, with 1,400 people from the diocese of Meath and an estimated 3,000 people from the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin among those who travelled to Lourdes for the jubilee celebrations.

Two chartered flights carried the faithful from the capital late last week, led by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin who was joined on the pilgrimage by Cardinal Desmond Connell and more than 50 diocesan priests.

Under clear skies, Pope Benedict spoke from a white podium set up on a sprawling field near the grotto where Mary is said to have appeared 18 times to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

“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.

The 81-year-old pontiff joined 230 bishops in the southwestern town, on the third day of his visit to France.

Singing hymns, tens of thousands of faithful, some in wheelchairs or on stretchers, flocked to the prairie of the Lourdes sanctuary for the Sunday services delivered in several languages. Lourdes 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.