Million flock to Pope's 'Woodstock'

Pope Benedict XVI ended a visit to his native Germany yesterday with a ringing appeal for a return to basic Christian values as he presided over an open-air Mass attended by hundreds of thousands of jubilant young Catholics from throughout the world.

The event was one of the largest Catholic celebrations Germany has witnessed. The vast crowd of flag-waving pilgrims gathered on the site of the Mass, a former open-cast mine near Cologne, was estimated at between 800,000 and a million.

Wearing a gold mitre and white and gold robes, Benedict XVI was greeted by waves of cheers as he appeared beneath a specially built transparent cupola resembling a flying saucer as the sun broke through a grey, cloud-filled sky.

Urging his audience to make wise use of the freedom God had given them, he said: "Freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total autonomy. It is rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness, so that we ourselves can become good." The 78-year-old warned about the rise of consumerism which he said had led to a "strange forgetfulness of God".

Young people should turn their backs on secularism and faddish new-age religions. There was "a kind of new explosion of religion" that if pushed too far turned faith into "almost a consumer product".

He called on young people to reject what he described as "do-it-yourself" religion. "Religion constructed on this basis cannot ultimately help us. Help people to discover the true star which points out the way to us: Jesus Christ."

The size of the crowd meant many who had spent the night camping out in the open were obliged to watch images of the Pope flashed up on huge video screens surrounding the site. As the Pontiff approached in his tall, glassed-in popemobile, hymns rang out as thousands of priests clad in black and purple stood in line to participate in the Mass.

Cologne police admitted yesterday that they had been overwhelmed by the event. The sheer volume of people attending the celebrations forced closure of the city's main railway station. More than 57 people were treated for injuries and exhaustion after becoming immersed in the crush of pilgrims gathered at the site of the Mass.

The event - which was being described as the "Pope's Woodstock" in the German media - was the climax of Benedict XVI's four-day visit to his homeland to preside over the World Youth Day, a major Catholic celebration held in different countries every three years that was started by the late Pope John Paul II. He said the next World Youth Day would be in Sydney in 2008.

Before embarking on what was his first trip abroad since his election last April, the Pope said he hoped his visit would help spark "a new wave of faith among young people".

The visit had a special significance for Germans, although they were vastly outnumbered by Catholics from Spain, France, Italy, Poland and the Americas. The Pope, who was raised in Nazi Germany, was briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and served as a member of an anti-aircraft unit during the closing stages of World War II. Horst Kohler, the German President, said the Vatican's choice of the former German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope was a sign of reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Germany 60 years after the end of the war.

The Pope visited the Cologne synagogue, where he condemned the evils of the Nazi era and warned about the rise of new anti-Semitism. But he declined to respond to Jewish leaders' demands that the Vatican throw open all its archives to reveal the extent of the Church's complicity with the Nazis during World War II.

- INDEPENDENT