Pope Benedict XVI left Rome yesterday for Australia, where he will meet hundreds of thousands of young people celebrating the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day.
The plane took off from Rome’s Fiumicino airport at 10:30am.
In a telegram to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano just before leaving, Benedict said he was “filled with a great desire to meet the youth of the entire world to exhort them to become courageous witnesses of the love of Christ,” a text released by the Vatican said.
The trip will be Benedict’s longest since becoming pope three years ago, and the 81-year-old pontiff will rest for several days at a retreat near Sydney ahead of the six-day event celebrating the Catholic faith aimed at young people.
His first public appearance will be at the head of a Sydney Harbour flotilla on Thursday, and the trip will culminate in an open-air mass at Sydney’s Randwick Racecourse expected to attract hundreds of thousands of pilgrims on July 20.
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