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SYDNEY: 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 organizers 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 the clergy.
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.”
Bidding “arrivederci” to the massive crowd
at a Sydney racecourse, the Pope announced that the next World Youth
Day would be held in Madrid in 2011.
The final service in the Catholic youth festival
came a day after the Pontiff said he was “deeply sorry” for the
“evil” of the sexual abuse of children by clergymen.
Royal Randwick 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.
Organizers 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 organizers, Benedict said the
entire event had been an unforgettable experience.
The 81-year-old Pope received a bird’s-eye
view of the massed pilgrims from a helicopter before alighting and
entering his iconic “popemobile.”
He did a slow circuit of the venue, smiling and
waving as mothers thrust babies up to the vehicle’s large windows
to bring their children closer to the Papal aura.
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 an estimated 223,000 pilgrims, replacing
Sydney’s easy-going pace with an atmosphere that combined football
match fever with rock concert festiveness and religious fervor.
World Youth Day was launched in 1986 by the late
Pope John Paul II in a bid 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
apologized for abuse in the Australian Church and called for those
responsible to be brought to justice.
During a Mass for local clergy in Sydney’s
Saint Mary’s Cathedral, he expressed his shame and made his first
direct and explicit apology to victims of pedophile 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 some activists dismissed the Pontiff’s
apology before a group of bishops, seminarians and novices, saying
words were not enough and that he should have apologized 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.
His colleague and fellow abuse victim Chris
MacIsaac said action was needed—not rhetoric.
“He should be making sure that his bishops are
putting in place adequate processes to deal with sexual abuse. The
victims are not being treated fairly and justly,” she told Agence
France-Presse.
“They should be making sure that they don’t
hide evidence,” she said.
The Pontiff will fly out of Australia today.
-- AFP
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