World Sep. 15, 2008 - 06:43AM JST ( 12 )

LOURDES, France —

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday celebrated mass before 150,000 faithful in the shrine town of Lourdes before urging French bishops to defend church doctrine on marriage and divorce.

The pontiff said the church will not open up to divorced Roman Catholics and appealed to bishops to “uphold firmly, even at the cost of opposing prevailing trends” marriage as a “stable union” between a man and a woman.

Making the first visit to France of his papacy, Benedict celebrated an open-air mass to mark the 150th anniversary of what Catholics believe were the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to a peasant girl in a grotto.

Under clear skies, the pope spoke from a white podium set up on a sprawling field not far from the grotto that has become one of the world’s most revered Catholic shrines.

“The power of love is stronger than the evil which threatens us,” he told followers, urging them to be true to their faith.

The southwestern town in the foothills of the Pyrenees is a magnet for the sick and disabled in search of a miracle cure from the grotto’s springs.

On Monday, Benedict is to lead a special mass dedicated to the sick.

The papal visit comes at a time of unease in the French Catholic Church as it battles a freefall in the number of churchgoers, despite the nation’s deep Christian heritage.

Speaking to bishops, the pope acknowledged that families were in crisis, “experiencing real turbulence” in societies that have lost their moral compass.

“A particularly painful situation concerns those who are divorced and remarried,” said the pontiff.

While the church is not off-limits to remarried Catholics and will surround them “with the greatest affection,” it “firmly maintains the principle of the indissolubility of marriage,” he said.

“Initiatives aimed at blessing irregular unions cannot be admitted,” he said.

The German pope, who as cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the chief enforcer of church doctrine, met with 170 cardinals and bishops who have watched their flock dwindle over the past decades.

While Catholicism remains by far the number one religion in France, only 10 percent of Catholics say they attend mass regularly, according to a recent poll.

The pope defended a decision applauded by traditionalist to revive church services in Latin, a move progressive voices has said will lead to more flagging church attendance.

“I am aware of your difficulties, but I do not doubt that, within a reasonable time you can find solutions”, said Benedict, before calling for unity.

Benedict began a pilgrimage to Lourdes on Saturday, visiting the grotto where the Madonna is said to have appeared 18 times to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

The leader of the world’s one billion Catholics knelt in prayer before a statue of the Virgin after drinking a glass of water from the “miracle” springs that was presented to him by a young girl.

Earlier, he urged young Catholics to shun the false “idols” of the modern world and told them not to be “afraid” of religious life during a mass in central Paris attended by 260,000 people.

The pope arrived in Paris on Friday, meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has called for easing France’s strict secularism defined in a 1905 law on the separation of church and state.

Sarkozy, a twice-divorced lapsed Catholic, broke a French taboo during a trip to the Vatican last year by calling for a “positive secularism” that would allow space for religion in public life.

Benedict told bishops that France needed to find a “new path” to accommodate religion in society, but said this could be achieved without changing laws.

The papal visit ends Monday.

Wire reports