Australians rate pope a top bloke (Extra)

Jul 21, 2008, 6:29 GMT

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.