Sydney - Pope Benedict XVI wowed a youth festival in Sydney Thursday with a passionate defence of his faith and a blistering attack on the evils of the modern world. "Life is not just a succession of events or experiences - helpful though many of them are - it's a search for the true, the good and the beautiful," the pope told youngsters gathered from across the globe.
The week-long World Youth Day celebrations culminate Sunday in a papal Mass for a congregation that could reach 500,000.
The 81-year-old pontiff was carried to greet an audience estimated at 225,000 aboard a pleasure cruiser that swept past the Opera House and under the iconic Harbour Bridge.
At the former container terminal cleared specially for the pope's first visit to Australia were euphoric young Catholics from more than 170 countries.
To hear the pope expound on the dangers of secularism and relativism, they had braved the nip of the southern hemisphere winter and the discomfort of billets in school halls and the stadiums used for Sydney's 2000 Olympic Games.
"Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically everything, has made 'experience' all-important," the Holy Father told them. "Yet experiences, detached from any consideration of what is good and true, can lead not to genuine freedom but to moral or intellectual confusion, to a lowering of standards, to a loss of self-respect and even despair."
Mornings for the pilgrims are taken up with Bible study, leaving the rest of the day free for a conviviality that, by its unabashed glee, has surprised and even embarrassed some jaded city folk.
"It's something about being around so many like-minded people," Sydney church worker Michelle Reynolds said when explaining the "mass hysteria" noted approvingly by a local newspaper.
"Sometimes, to be young and Catholic, you can feel really alone. If you say you go to Mass every week, you can be looked at quite funny," she said.
One-fourth of Australia's 21 million people are Catholics, but regular attendance at Mass is now down to 14 per cent of those who profess to be part of the global communion of 1.1 billion.
During his stay, which ends Monday, the pope is expected to repeat an apology to victims of sexual abuse by the clergy that he tendered during his April visit to the United States.
The church has been dogged over the last decade by charges that it has done more for the perpetrators than their victims. That concern was highlighted by an injudicious remark by World Youth Day organizer Bishop Anthony Fisher, when he said the public should relish the joy of the pilgrims "rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds."
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said before meeting the pope that a papal apology to victims of sex abuse by priests was a matter for the church, but that saying sorry in the US had brought "great comfort and healing."
Rudd, a devout Christian, has championed a role for the faithful in guiding public policy. It was a point taken up by the Holy Father when he said that secularism, "like every ideology, imposes a world view" and should be fiercely resisted.
"If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image and debate and policy concerning the public good will be driven more by the consequences than by principles grounded in truth," the pope said.
Joyous youngsters have taken over the harbour city, giving it a vim and vigour without parallel.
"It appears to be a like a party, an unusual atmosphere in Sydney," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters when relating remarks by the German-born pontiff.
