Pope in Lourdes after Paris mass for 260,000
Photo: AFP
Yahoo! Asia News
Sunday September 14, 3:49 AM
LOURDES, France (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday prayed at one of the most revered Christian shrines hours after leading an open-air mass in central Paris attended by 260,000 people.
The leader of the world's one billion Catholics traveled to Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southwest France to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Vatican-recognised apparitions of Mary to peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous.
After visiting a church where Bernadette was baptised and the small room where her family lived in poverty, the pope went aboard his popemobile to the grotto where she had her "encounters" with the Madonna.
The pontiff knelt in prayer at the grotto of Masiabelle where Mary is said to have appeared 18 times to Bernadette in 1858 and drank a glass of water from the "miracle" springs presented to him by a young girl.
The 81-year-old pontiff was making his first visit to France since his election in 2005.
Under bright sunshine at the historic Invalides esplanade in central Paris, Benedict earlier appealed to young Catholics to shun the false "idols" of the modern world and told them not to be "afraid" of a religious life.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 4:12 PM
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