Sunday, September 14, 2008
Pope urges pilgrims at Lourdes to cling to hope
LOURDES, France (AP) -- People must cling to hope even in dire circumstances like injustice and torture, Pope Benedict XVI told the faithful at Sunday Mass in Lourdes, which has become a shrine for desperate causes and hope against all odds.
"The power of love is stronger than the evil which threatens us," Benedict told at least 100,000 pilgrims gathered for Mass on a rain-soaked field.
Some knelt on cardboard boxes or plastic bags to protect themselves from the damp conditions, while others watched from wheelchairs.
About 6 million people, many of them sick and suffering, visit the French town in the foothills of the Pyrenees each year to drink from and bathe in its cool spring. Many Roman Catholics believe the water has healing powers, and the Church has officially recognized 67 miracle cures here.
Benedict was in Lourdes to mark the 150th anniversary of visions of the Virgin Mary to a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous. She was later named a saint.
The 81-year-old Benedict, looking tired on the third day of his four-day trip to France, told young people: "Do not allow yourselves to be discouraged by difficulties."
Among the pilgrims at Sunday's Mass was a group of Spanish students who had slept on mats on the floor of Lourdes' basilica. Carlos Aurensanz, 20, said he hoped Benedict's successor would bring "more youth and vitality" to the Church.
Benedict was making his first trip to France since his election in 2005 after the death of John Paul II.
Benedict told the crowd: "There is a love in this world that is stronger than death, stronger than our weaknesses and sins."
Jesus in his death by crucifixion "took upon himself the weight of all the sufferings and injustices of our humanity," the pope said. "He bore the humiliation and the discrimination, the torture suffered in many parts of the world by so many of our brothers and sisters for the love of Christ."
The pontiff said the faithful should live their lives in "invincible hope, refusing to believe those who claim that we are trapped in the fatal power of our destiny."
The pope also met French bishops to discuss concerns about France, where fewer than 10 percent of people attend Mass every week, and which also has a growing Muslim population.
He urged bishops to concentrate on interfaith initiatives that "favor reciprocal knowledge and respect."
With more than half of France's babies now born to unmarried couples, Benedict pushed for stronger promotion of marriage, calling the family "the foundation on which the whole of society rests."
While insisting the church could not sanction new marriages for divorced Catholics, he expressed "greatest affection" for those who could not keep their marriages alive.
Benedict spent Saturday night at a hermitage, after drinking water from the Lourdes spring. He has said he didn't make the journey to Lourdes in a search for miracles.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
