COLOGNE, Aug 20: Hundreds of thousands of ecstatic young people singing religious songs and dancing feted Pope Benedict on Saturday night at a prayer vigil where he told them that there was much to criticize in the Church.

At the end of his third day in his homeland, the 78-year-old Pope travelled to the Marienfeld, a sprawling reclaimed industrial site some 30 km outside Cologne.

Some 700,000 cheering people, according to organisers’ estimates, greeted him as he arrived in a popemobile for a prayer vigil ahead of Sunday’s formal conclusion of the Roman Catholic Church’s World Youth Day festivities.

The Pope blessed a newly forged 6.5 tonne bell dedicated to the memory of his predecessor, John Paul II, who began the World Youth Day festivities in the 1980s and died last April.

Young people from all over the world were camped out on the sprawling field and most planned to spend the night there in order to keep their spots for Sunday morning’s Mass.

Addressing them from under a white canopy on a hill, he told them to try to look for good role models and said they should not be discouraged if there were some bad elements in the Church itself.

“There is much that could be criticised in the Church,” he said.

“We know this and the Lord himself told us so: it is a net with good fish and bad fish, a field with wheat and darnel.”

He noted that Pope John Paul had several times asked pardon “for the wrong that was done in the course of history through the words and deeds of members of the Church”.

Unlike his predecessor, Benedict did not speak specifically to the young people about sexual morality or materialism. His message to them was more general and centred around the theme of life’s journey.

Despite the cold evening air, most of the young people took the difficulties in stride as they prepared to spend the night in the open.

“I am here because I am a Catholic, and it is a great chance to see the new Pope. It will make me a stronger Catholic,” said Katja Murashevich, a 20-year-old student from Ukraine who was huddled in a sleeping bag before the Pope arrived.

“We will spend all night praying and meditating,” she said.

The Pope will return to Marienfeld on Sunday morning to celebrate a huge open-air mass before the crowd and officially announce the venue for the next World Youth Day. It is expected to be Sydney, Australia in 2008.

Security has been tight for the Pope’s visit, which ends on Sunday night when he returns to Rome.—Reuters