Pope Benedict XVI waits to celebrate Mass at La Prairie in Lourdes on September 14, 2008 where the pontiff is on a pilgrimage to the shrine where the faithful believe the Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant girl 150 years ago.

Reuters

Pope Benedict draws massive crowd in Paris
Updated Sat. Sep. 13 2008 7:42 PM ET
The Canadian Press

PARIS -- Pope Benedict condemned unbridled "pagan" passion for power, possessions and money as a modern-day plague on Saturday, as he led more than a quarter million Catholics at an outdoor mass in Paris.

Benedict was making his first visit as pontiff to the French capital, renowned for its luxury goods, fashion sense and cultural riches.

"Has not our modern world created its own idols?" Benedict said in his homily, and wondered aloud whether people have "imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity?"
"This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask," the pontiff said.

The 260,000 or so people who gathered on the lawns of the Esplanade des Invalides displayed a joyful outpouring of faith for this traditionally Roman Catholic country, which has witnessed a sharp decline in churchgoing in recent years.

Benedict has continued with a campaign started by his predecessor, John Paul, who worried that the ever-more affluent West was turning consumerism into a kind of religion and ignoring its Christian roots of spiritual values.

Paraphrasing from the New Testament, Benedict decried "insatiable greed" and said "the love of money is the root of all evil."

"Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even knowledge, diverted man from his true destiny?" the Pope asked.

In his homily, Benedict blasted modern society's thirst for these new "pagan" idols as a "scandal, a real plague."

The Pope urged the faithful to "shun the worship of idols. Do not tire of doing good!"'
Listeners welcomed his words.

"It was a vivid call to order about what is essential in life," said Herve Tarcier, a 49-year-old engineer who volunteered at the mass. "This was exactly the message our society needs."
Jacqueline Dudek, a 76-year-old great-grandmother from Paris, said she was glad much of France's political elite was there to hear the anti-materialism homily.
"They have plenty of things to learn," she said.

The late-morning mass ended peacefully, with followers pressing for a chance to touch the pontiff's robes or clutch his hand as he left the field. Security officers surrounded the Pope, and about a dozen sharpshooters watched over the crowd from the roof of a stately 19th century building overlooking the Esplanade.

It was Benedict's only public appearance Saturday before he flies to Lourdes on a pilgrimage to the shrine there, which draws millions of pilgrims each year, many of them hoping for miracle cures of physical or psychic ills.

Tens of thousands of faithful, many of them young people, had camped overnight on the Parisian field after hearing greetings from the Pope Friday night as he left a prayer service in Notre Dame.

On Friday, Benedict told young people they shouldn't fear spreading their faith in a society where secularism is entrenched and Islam is growing.

While most French are Catholic at least by tradition -- if not in practice -- the old yarn is that most go to church three times in their lifetimes: at their baptism, wedding and funeral.
France also has a fervent belief that faith and the state should be kept strictly separate.
Benedict and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who held talks on Friday, spoke publicly of the contribution religion can make to forging an ethical society.

"They say that Catholics in France are fewer and fewer, and less devoted. But you can see here that is not true," said Robert Pavilla, a 58-year-old school groundskeeper, gesturing toward the throngs of people on the Paris esplanade Saturday morning.