Turn from ‘death and terror’ to love of God, says Pope

FATIMA - Pope Benedict XVI Thursday urged humanity to turn away from selfishness, death and terror to the love of God, as he spoke at a gigantic open-air mass in Fatima.

“At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven,” Benedict told thousands of pilgrims.

He was referring to the supposed apparition of the Virgin Mary to three Portuguese shepherd children in Fatima, May 13, 1917, during World War I.

The Pope’s visit to Fatima, the highlight of his four days in Portugal, marked the 93th anniversary of the apparition, which turned the town into one of the main pilgrimage sites in the Roman Catholic world.

Those attending the mass at a shrine to the Virgin Mary included President Anibal Cavaco Silva, Foreign Minister Luis Amado and more than 1,000 priests of various nationalities.

The Pope paid tribute to Mary and to the spirituality of the shepherd children, saying God would seek “righteous men and women” to help complete “Fatima’s prophetic mission” and to end a “cycle of death and terror” that continued to operate in the world.

Benedict arrived in Fatima Wednesday from Lisbon, where he celebrated an open-air mass that drew an estimated 280,000 people. He will also preside over a mass in Porto Friday.

On the plane to Portugal, Benedict condemned the ongoing sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church in unusually harsh terms.

During his trip, he has also spoken of the weakening of priestly ideals and of the sufferings of humanity, in what were interpreted as possible references to the scandals.

After arriving in Fatima on Wednesday, the Pope visited the Chapel of the Apparitions, where he thanked the Virgin Mary for saving his predecessor John Paul II from a murder attempt at Saint Peter’s Square in 1981.