Pope Hails Power of Love at Lourdes

"Let us turn our gaze towards Christ," he said. "It is he who will make us free to love as he loves us and to build a reconciled world."

LONDON (The Catholic Herald, U.K.) - Pope Benedict XVI has told pilgrims at Lourdes that the Sign of the Cross is a symbol of a love which is stronger than evil.Visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes as a pilgrim on Sunday, Pope Benedict said that the Sign of the Cross that the Virgin Mary made to St Bernadette Soubirous was a symbol of our faith, which speaks of God's love.

In his homily on Sunday morning he said: "It tells us that there is a love in this world that is stronger than death, stronger than our weaknesses and sins. The power of love is stronger than the evil which threatens us."Over 160,000 people were gathered for the Pontiff's Mass on the rain-soaked La Prairie, a large meadow at the Marian shrine, which is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the apparitions this year. Sick and suffering pilgrims come from all over the world to take the waters at the shrine and pray for the Virgin's intercession, hoping for cures.

Benedict XVI said that the Virgin Mary revealed the universality of God's love for men in Lourdes. He said: "She invites all people of goodwill, all those who suffer in heart or body, to raise their eyes towards the Cross of Jesus so as to discover there the source of life, the source of salvation."The Church, he said, has the mission of showing God's loving face through Christ.

"Let us turn our gaze towards Christ," he said. "It is he who will make us free to love as he loves us and to build a reconciled world. For on this Cross Jesus took upon himself the weight of all the sufferings and injustices of our humanity. He bore the humiliation and the discrimination, the torture suffered in many parts of the world by so many of our brothers and sisters, for the love of Christ. We entrust all this to Mary, Mother of Jesus and our mother present at the foot of the Cross."

Many of the pilgrims from around the world were brought to the papal Mass on stretchers and in wheelchairs. Ten different languages were used during the liturgy, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor was among the pilgrims.The Pontiff said that the jubilee celebrations encouraged pilgrims "to embark upon a journey of faith and conversion".He said: "Today, Mary comes to meet us, so as to show us the way towards a renewal of life for our communities and for each one of us. By welcoming her Son, whom she presents to us, we are plunged into a living stream in which the faith can rediscover new vigour, in which the Church can be strengthened so as to proclaim the mystery of Christ ever more boldly. Jesus, born of Mary, is the Son of God, the sole Saviour of all people, living and acting in his Church and in the world.

"The Church is sent everywhere in the world to proclaim this unique message and to invite people to receive it through an authentic conversion of heart. This mission, entrusted by Jesus to his disciples, receives here, on the occasion of this jubilee, a breath of new life."

In the evening the Pope took part in a Eucharistic procession. After spending a long time in silent adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament at the open-air altar in La Prairie he addressed the pilgrims to speak again of Christ's love, saying that Christ in the Eucharist was also Christ future and Christ past.