Sydney - Australians were touched by the 'simple humanity'
of Pope Benedict XVI, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Monday in his
farewell at the end of a week-long Catholic youth festival in Sydney.
Rudd said the 81-year-old pontiff won hearts by making special
mention of the often downtrodden Aborigines, fulfilling the last wish
of a dying police officer and meeting sexual abuse victims to say
sorry to them on behalf of a church that some accuse of treating
wayward priests too leniently.
Speaking before the pope boarded a chartered Qantas plane for the
23-hour flight back to Rome, Rudd related how Benedict had gone out
of his way to give comfort to Constable Gary Hill, a 22-year veteran
of the police force, just days before he died.
The pope, believing the stricken officer was giving him his
officer's hat as a gift, obligingly wore it briefly and then kept it
as a memento of their unscripted meeting.
'Your Holiness, in Australia we are a relatively informal lot and
we like that approach,' the prime minister said. 'We like it very
much and you should now see yourself as the honorary chaplain of the
NSW Police Force.'
'Dear friends, as I depart from Sydney, I ask God to look lovingly
on this city, this country and all its inhabitants,' the pope said in
response.
Craig Ashby, an indigenous youth leader who was among a dozen
pilgrims who had lunch with the pope on Saturday, said the church's
most respected scholar and fearsome disciplinarian had come across as
an ordinary mortal during the meal.
'He's just like a normal bloke,' Ashby said. 'It was just great to
see a side of him that was normal. He ate the same, he coughed the
same. He was just like my old parish priest.'
Three years into his papacy, the church's former top liturgical
enforcer has shown no sign of dumbing down the homilies he gives
around the world or trying to be a slick performer.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi admitted that many
listeners at the final mass for the youngsters would have found his
speech very challenging.
'It was the holy father's intention to give a speech, not so much
to impress,' he told reporters.
Final figures show that 110,000 pilgrims from 170 nations attended
the World Youth Day celebrations along with 113,000 Australians. More
than 500,000 were in the streets to welcome the pope and over 400,000
were at Sunday's papal mass that closed the event.
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