Hundreds of thousands attend pope's open-air mass (1st Lead)

Sep 13, 2008, 8:28 GMT

Paris - An estimated 170,000 people had gathered Saturday at the Esplanades des Invalides park in the heart of Paris as Pope Benedict XVI began celebrating an open-air mass, according to police estimates.

About 60,000 young people, who travelled to the French capital from all over the country, spent the night on the Esplanades. Thousands of others followed the event on giant screens set up on the Left Bank.

The archbishops of Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux were among 1,500 priests and 300 permanent deacons who concelebrated the mass with the 81-year-old pontiff, who is on the second day of a four-day visit to France.

Earlier Saturday, Benedict XVI visited the Institute de France, to which he has belonged since 1992 when he became a foreign member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.

In a brief address to his fellow members of the institute, the pope quoted the French writer Francois Rabelais in saying, ''Science without conscience brings only ruin to the soul'.'

Later Saturday, the pope will travel as a pilgrim to the pilgrimage site of Lourdes in southern France, where large crowds are expected to help him celebrate the 150th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin Mary to a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, in 1858.