Lourdes, France - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday reaffirmed the Catholic Church's strict ban on divorce by telling bishops in the southern French city of Lourdes that they must not accept the unions of partners who had been married before. "The stable union of a man and a women ... is no longer, in the minds of certain people, the reference point for conjugal commitment. However, experience shows that the family is the foundation on which the whole of society rests," the pope said during a meeting with some 170 bishops.
He went on to say: "The Church ... firmly maintains the principle of the indissolubility of marriage ... Hence initiatives aimed at blessing illegitimate unions cannot be accepted."
The pope's declaration will find little support in France. According to divorcemagazine.com, about 43 per cent of all French marriages end in divorce.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who broke protocol by welcoming Benedict XVI to the Elysee Palace, has been married three times.
In addition, more French couples than ever before now choose to live together without getting married. So prevalent is cohabitation that more than 50 per cent of the children born in France in 2007 were born out of wedlock.
Earlier Sunday, some 170,000 people gathered in Lourdes as Benedict XVI celebrated a Mass to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a young peasant girl.
The open-air mass was the symbolic high point of the 81-year-old pontiff's four-day visit to France, his first since he was elected to succeed the popular John Paul II in April 2005.
As he did in Paris on Saturday, the pope used the occasion to try and attract young people to the priesthood.
"For your part, dear young people, do not be afraid to say yes to the Lord's summons when he invites you to walk in his footsteps," Benedict XVI said in his homily.
"To those among you whom he calls to follow him in the priesthood or the religious life, I would like to reiterate all the joy that is to be had through giving one's life totally for the service of God and others."
The number of priests in fiercely secular France has been steadily declining. There are now about half the number of priests in the country as there were in 1970.
Benedict XVI as a pilgrim to Lourdes where 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, the daughter of a poor miller, said Mary appeared to her 18 times in a grotto just outside the town in 1858.
"The power of love is stronger than the evil which threatens us. It is this mystery of the universality of God's love for men that Mary came to reveal here, in Lourdes," the pope said in Sunday's homily.
Lourdes has become one of the most popular Christian pilgrimage sites in the world, with an estimated 6 million visitors from all over the world expected this year, many of them coming to pray for a miraculous cure for their illness.
On Monday, before returning to the Vatican, Benedict XVI is to celebrate a Mass for the sick in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in Lourdes.
