KEY POINTS:
As tens of thousands of pilgrims prepared to return home today with a fresh warning from Pope Benedict XVI of vanishing spirituality and the need for the renewal of the Catholic church, the weather finally closed down over World Youth Day.
With storms threatening Sydney after a week
of blue skies and T-shirt temperatures, the Pope yesterday delivered his final message to the faithful in Australia under leaden grey skies and a biting wind.
More than 400,000 people were estimated to have packed Randwick racecourse and nearby Centennial Park for the closing Mass of a celebration of Catholicism that defied earlier predictions of chaos.
Backed by the experience of the 2000 Olympics and last year's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, government, security, transport and emergency services handled almost without incident the reception, daily distribution and accommodation of 215,000 international and local pilgrims.
Police reported few incidents - the worst the theft of about A$7000 ($8900) from the lodgings of foreign priests - and ambulance and health authorities escaped with a handful of minor injuries among pilgrims and the infection of about 140 with influenza and a gastro bug.
And despite the Federal Court's overruling of laws banning the "annoying" of pilgrims, protests remained relatively small and isolated.
Several hundred demonstrators, some dressed as devils or in drag, followed a ute bearing an effigy of the Pope as an estimated 180,000 pilgrims walked 9km across Sydney Harbour bridge on Saturday towards an overnight vigil at Randwick.
One pilgrim was detained after a clash with a protesters wearing a T-shirt with the logo "Pope go homo".
During an address before Saturday Mass at St Mary's Cathedral, Pope Benedict confronted continuing controversy in Australia over clerical sexual abuse, delivering a promised apology despite doubts expressed by some church officials and its exclusion from advance speech notes given to journalists.
"Indeed, I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that as their pastor I too share in their suffering," he said.
"These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pain and have damaged the church's witness."
Tens of thousands of pilgrims endured plummeting temperatures to listen to the Pope again at Saturday night's candlelight vigil, sleeping out under a full moon in bitter cold ahead of yesterday's Mass.
As they tried to warm themselves, Pope Benedict flew over the packed enclosures in a helicopter before setting down and climbing aboard his V8 Mercedes Popemobile and heading into a Randwick radically transformed from racecourse to open-air cathedral.
Pilgrims had complained after the Pope's official arrival and motorcade through Sydney on Thursday that the Popemobile had raced too fast past streets lined several deep by pilgrims and Sydneysiders. Yesterday the armoured Papal vehicle rolled into Randwick at an easy walking pace, flanked on each side by columns of black-suited security guards, and driving an anti-clockwise lap - the opposite direction to racing there.
His progress was greeted with a deafening roar and a vast ocean of waving flags and banners.
At one stage he halted, and a baby was passed to him across the heads of his guards.
Smiling, the Pope kissed and blessed the infant and handed it back.
Accompanied by church dignitaries and surrounded by 400 bishops and cardinals, he climbed a red-carpeted ramp to his wooden throne atop a dais set back 30m from the crowds on the instructions of security officials.
An ornate copy of the Gospels was escorted up the ramp by Fijian dancers for a service that included the confirmation of 24 pilgrims.
In his homily, Pope Benedict returned to his theme of waning spirituality in a materialistic world and urged young pilgrims to consider joining Catholic orders to help make a difference for succeeding generations.
Both the world and the church needed renewal, he said.
"In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading - an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.
"How many of our contemporaries have built broken cisterns in desperate search for meaning, the ultimate meaning that only love can give? [In ancient biblical times disused or damaged cisterns were sometimes used as temporary prisons].
"The church also needs this spirit of renewal.
"She needs your faith, your idealism and your generosity so that she can always be young in the spirit."
At the conclusion of the Mass, Pope Benedict announced that the next World Youth Day would be held in Madrid, Spain, in 2011.
