Pope conducts mass at World Youth Day festival
Sunday 20 July 2008
Pope Benedict travelled by popemobile to the Randwick Jockey Club in Sydney on Sunday, conducting mass for up to 300,000 people attending the World Youth Day celebrations, which will next be held in Spain in 2011.
Sunday 20 July 2008
By Reuters (text) / Nicolas Germain (video)SYDNEY, July 20 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict flew by helicopter
on Sunday over hundreds of thousands of young Catholic pilgrims
who staged an all-night vigil at Sydney's main horse racing
track ahead of an outdoor papal mass.
Benedict then travelled by popemobile to the Randwick Jockey
Club track where up to 300,000 pilgrims had gathered to hear the
81-year-old pontiff conduct mass to end World Youth Day, the
Catholic Church's biggest youth festival.
The pope was greeted by screaming, flag waving pilgrims.
The Catholic Church hopes World Youth Day, the brainchild of
the late Pope John Paul II, will revitalise the world's young
Catholics at a time when the cult of the individual and
consumerism has become big distractions in their daily lives.
Up to 200,000 pilgrims from around the world camped out at
the race track overnight, singing into the night in temperatures
that dipped to about 8 degrees Celsius.
WYD is the Church's version of Woodstock, five days and
nights of peace, love and Christianity. More than 165 concerts
have been staged, from religious music to heavy metal, acid
jazz, and rap, along with mass confessionals and pray meetings.
But World Youth Day has been overshadowed by the issue of
sexual abuse by clergy.
Benedict on Saturday apologised directly for the first time
for sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, but victims
groups in Australia said they wanted action and not words.
The pope, making some of his most explicit comments on the
sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Church in several
countries, also said unequivocally that those responsible should
be brought to justice.
Broken Rites, which represents abuse victims in Australia,
has a list of 107 convictions for church abuse, but says there
could be thousands of victims as only a few cases go to court.
The pope confronted sexual abuse in the Church in the United
States during a visit there in April, meeting victims and vowing
to keep paedophiles out of the priesthood.
In Australia, home to the world's biggest gay and lesbian
mardi gras and where abortion and stem cell research is legal,
the Catholic church's teachings often fall on deaf ears.
Some 5 million Australians describe themselves as Catholic,
but less than one million attend Sunday mass and the number may
have dropped to about 100,000 in the past 5 years.
Around 1,000 protesters marched in Sydney on Saturday
against Church teachings on sexual morality, trying to hand out
condoms to pilgrims.
-
Fanou Filali
20/07 - F24 correspondent in Sydney
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