Pope Drinks Water From Lourdes, Speaks of Pilgrims, Miracles, and Materialism

As millions of pilgrims do each year, Pope Benedict XVI has drunk water Saturday from the Lourdes spring famed for miraculous cures as he visited a grotto at the sanctuary he calls a "citadel of hope."

The grotto sheltered Benedict from a steady rain Saturday but didn't keep out the evening chill as the pontiff, in a red mantle over white robes, prayed and lit a candle.

Benedict later told faithful who carried torches in a procession through the town that by following in Bernadette's footsteps pilgrims enter into the "extraordinary closeness between heaven and earth."

As torch lights twinkled in the night, the pope likened this link between the heavenly and the terrestrial to a "luminous path" which "opens up in human history, even in its darkest moments."

He cited violence, war, terrorism and famine among the world's afflictions and paid tribute to Christians who die for their faith.

Speaking of the pilgrims who flock to Lourdes from around the world, Benedict wondered aloud how many come here "with the hope — secretly perhaps — of receiving some miracle" and upon their return home undergo a spiritual experience which fills them with "hope, compassion, tenderness."

More than 5 million people visit Lourdes every year — some brought to the spring in wheelchairs and stretchers — in hopes that drinking and bathing in the water will heal their ailments. The church has officially recognized 67 miracle cures linked to Lourdes over the years.

The main purpose of Benedict's first visit to France as pontiff was the pilgrimage in Lourdes as the shrine marked the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to 14-year-old Bernadette, who later was made a saint.

In the grotto, Benedict stood on the spot where his predecessor, John Paul II, had prayed four years earlier. When John Paul visited in 2004, he was 84 and suffering the final ravages of Parkinson's disease, and he needed help from aides. It was his final trip abroad, and he died the following year.

The pope's Mass in Paris earlier in the day also evoked themes dear to John Paul II, who worried that the affluent West was turning consumerism into a kind of religion and ignoring its Christian roots.

"This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask," Benedict said in his homily in the French capital, renowned for its luxury goods, fashion sense and cultural riches.

"Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even knowledge, diverted man from his true destiny?" the pope asked.

"Has not our modern world created its own idols?" Benedict said, wondering aloud whether people have "imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity?"