Pope Benedict, visiting the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the second World War, today prayed for an end to all violent conflict.
The pope celebrated mass for thousands of people at the foot of the Benedictine Abbey at Montecassino, which was destroyed in 1944 by Allied bombs and later rebuilt.
"In this place, where so many lost their lives in the battles that were fought during the second World War, we pray especially for the souls of the fallen, commending them to God's infinite mercy, and we pray for an end to the wars that continue to afflict our world," he said at the end of the mass.
The abbey was founded by St Benedict, whose name the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took when he was elected pope in 2005.
The battle of Montecassino, also known as the Battle for Rome, was one of the most complex and bloody of the second World War.
It lasted for nearly four months in early 1944 as Allied forces tried to penetrate Germany's Gustav Line to take Rome.
Tens of thousands of soldiers were killed before the Allies broke through and captured the Italian capital as the Germans retreated north.
In his sermon, the pope said the military cemeteries that dot the area were "silent witnesses" to suffering.
The battle saw the much-criticised destruction of the massive hilltop abbey by Allied bombing on February 15th, 1944.
The Allies had wrongly believed the Germans were using the site, founded by St Benedict in about 529, as a lookout.
The monastery had been standing for some 700 years. It took more than a decade to rebuild it after the war.
Reuters