Prayer and controversy: Pope ends four-day visit to France (Feature)

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Sep 15, 2008, 11:13 GMT

Lourdes, France - Pope Benedict XVI ended his four-day visit to France on Monday with a mass for the sick in the southern pilgrimage site of Lourdes.

Thousands of ill people from all over the world, many of them in wheelchairs or on stretchers, took part in the mass in the hope of a miraculous cure or simply morale.

'Many cures occur within,' said 44-year-old Andrea Leffers from Papenburg, Germany, who has been partly paralyzed since suffering a stroke. She said she came to Lourdes 'to find the strength to face the everyday.'

Helene Damon, of France, came with her one-year-old daughter Philippine, who was born paralyzed.

'I am not hoping for a miracle, but I need courage to be able to live with it,' she said.

However, Margaret Clarke of Ireland said that she came to cure her autistic 10-year-old son. 'Of course, I believe in a miracle. That is part of our faith.'

Lourdes has been a popular destination for Christian pilgrims since 1858, when a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, said the Virgin Mary appeared to her 18 times. This year, as many as 8 million people are expected to to travel here.

Benedict XVI came to Lourdes as a pilgrim to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the appearances. Following the mass, he flew by helicopter to Lourdes-Tarbes Airport, where he was seen off by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.

The 81-year-old pontiff's four-day visit - his first trip to France since he was elected pope in April 2005 - has provoked a political controversy, with opposition politicians accusing President Nicolas Sarkozy of wanting to weaken the country's secularism.

Benedict XVI began the visit on Friday in Paris, where he was welcomed by Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, to the Elysee Palace.

'It would be a folly to deprive ourselves of religion,' Sarkozy said on that occasion, and called for a principle of 'positive laicity, open laicity, an invitation to dialogue, tolerance and respect.'

Laicity is what the French call their strict principle of the separation of Church and State, which was made a law in 1905 and has become part of the country's identity.

'There is no positive or negative laicity, no open or closed laicity, no tolerant or intolerant laicity,' countered the head of the Socialist Party, Francois Holland. 'There is only laicity.'

On Sunday, in Lourdes, the pope supported Sarkozy, saying that to 'emphasize the Christian roots of France... a new way must be found to interpret and experience every day the fundamental values on which a nation's identity is built.'

He added, 'Your president has described a way.'

However, on Sunday Benedict XVI also noted that the Church would not change its strict ban on divorce.

He told a meeting of bishops in Lourdes, 'The Church ... firmly maintains the principle of the indissolubility of marriage... Hence initiatives aimed at blessing illegitimate unions cannot be accepted.'

The pope's declaration will find little support in France, where nearly half of all French marriages end in divorce and more than half of all babies born last year were born out of wedlock.

It may also not have pleased Sarkozy, who has been married three times.