Meditations paint bleak picture of world

Pope Benedict led a Good Friday procession this weekend, and heard meditations lamenting a "diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family," an apparent reference to gay marriage and abortion.

The 78-year-old Pope led the traditional Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession around the ruins of Rome's ancient Colosseum commemorating Christ's death.

The 14 meditations, written by Italian Archbishop Angelo Comastri and read aloud to the crowd by actors, painted a picture of a bleak world threatened on all sides.

One of the meditations appeared to be a reference to homosexual marriages and moves to give legal status to unmarried couples.

"Surely God is deeply pained by the attack on the family," another meditation said. "Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family."

The Pope, wearing a red cape over his white cassock, carried a wooden cross for part of the service, as tens of thousands of people held candles on the streets.

Another meditation lamented a "move to re-invent mankind, to modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God ... a risky and dangerous venture."

Yet another meditation said the world had lost its sense of sin. "Today a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan, a mindless desire for transgression, a dishonest and frivolous freedom, exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication," it said.

The procession was the second event for the Pope on Good Friday, the most solemn day in the Christian calendar, when the faithful commemorate Christ's crucifixion.

At another Good Friday service earlier in the day, the Pope heard a Vatican preacher rail against The Da Vinci Code, branding it an example of Jesus being sold out by a wave of what he called "pseudo-historic" art.

- REUTERS