Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Pope draws huge crowd in Paris

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By Francois Durand, Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI arrives at the Invalides to celebrate a Mass with the 200,000 people who gathered on Saturday in Paris, France. The four-day trip to Paris and Lourdes is seen as an attempt to reinvigorate Catholicism in France.

USA Today

PARIS (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI 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 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 gathered on the lawns of the Esplanade des Invalides was a joyful outpouring of faith for the 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 II, 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 message.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 3:46 PM