The New York Times - July 20, 2008
Tim Johnston

"A new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God's gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished - not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed," he told a congregation of about 400,000 gathered at a Sydney race track and neighboring park.

He sought "a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deaden our souls and poison our relationships," he told his rapt audience, which included 26 cardinals and more than 400 bishops.

Sunday's Mass was the culmination of six days of public and private events of World Youth Day, which the Roman Catholic Church says is the largest gathering of young people on the planet. The pope has used the event as a forum to call for religion to be returned to the center of the moral universe; for Catholicism to return to its evangelistic roots; and for a united front, both among Christians and among the world's religions, in the face of a world becoming ever more materialistic.

"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," he warned.

He also used an address Saturday to apologize for the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and brothers in Australia. Going further than the apology he made to American Catholics during a visit to the United States in April, the pontiff personally identified himself with the pain of the victims.

"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," he said in a departure from his prepared script.

He said that those guilty of sexual abuse, "a grave betrayal of trust" as he called it, should be brought to justice.

Broken Rites, a pressure group which assists the victims of sexual abuse by figures of religious authority, called the apology hollow, saying that he had not apologized to the victims in person.

But in other aspects, World Youth Day has been a triumph. Despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of young visitors, 125,000 of them from overseas, there has been almost no trouble. The police have reported only one arrest, of a young Australian Catholic who punched a demonstrator who was throwing condoms into a crowd of pilgrims in protest at the church's stance on birth control and opposition to condoms as a barrier to the spread of H.I.V.

The event, which happens every three or four years, is scheduled to be held next in Madrid in 2011.

080720
NYT080716