Pope Benedict XVI has urged young people to reject the “spiritual desert” that he says is spreading throughout the world.
Benedict said at a mass today before more than 200,000 Catholic pilgrims that they would be responsible for building a new age free from greed, apathy and selfishness.
He said that along with material wealth a "spiritual desert is spreading" throughout the world, describing it as "an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair".
Today's Mass wraps up the six-day World Youth Day festival in Sydney that has drawn massive crowds of pilgrims to Australia's largest city, and was watched on television by a global audience estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.
The pope said the next World Youth Day will be held in the Spanish capital Madrid in 2011. "I look forward to seeing you again in three years' time," he said.
Yesterday, Benedict apologised for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Australia, saying those responsible should be brought to justice.
"I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured," the pontiff said in a homily in Sydney.
"These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation," he said. "Those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice."
Victims of Church abuse in Australia have been calling on the pope to issue a public apology, during his visit to Sydney for World Youth Day, and to implement an open and accountable system of investigating abuse claims. They say the Catholic Church in Australia continues to try and cover-up abuse.
The One-in-Four support group yesterday called on Catholic bishops and priests to demonstrate true remorse for clerical child sex abuse. The Irish group welcomed the Pope’s strong apology but warned previous words had not been matched by actions in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy.