Palm Sunday Mass Held for 100,000 Pilgrims : Pope Decries ‘Consumerism, Drugs, Eroticism’

Pope John Paul II celebrated a Palm Sunday Mass for 100,000 pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, praying that the world will put aside “the false surrogates of consumerism, drugs and eroticism.”

In a surprise announcement after the Mass, John Paul said he will lead a youth pilgrimage to the Spanish shrine of Santiago di Compostela next year to help young people find the roots of their faith “on the threshold of the year 2000.”

The Roman Catholic pontiff, wearing red and white vestments embroidered in gold, celebrated theMass on the broad marble steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in Christendom.

John Paul joined in a prayer “that the world in which we live, shaken by varied crises, including the loss of the sense of life, with the consequent pursuit of the false surrogates of consumerism, drugs and eroticism, recover in Christ the only source of the deepest sense of life.”

In his homily, the Pope spoke of the religious significance of Palm Sunday, which recalls Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The day opens the solemn Holy Week observances of Jesus’ Last Supper and Crucifixion, leading to next Sunday’s Easter Mass.

The Pope did not mention the decision by Jerusalem church officials canceling the traditional Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem’s Old City because of the 16-week-old Palestinian uprising in Israeli-occupied territories.

International Youth Day

For the third year, John Paul marked International Youth Day on Palm Sunday, and about 20,000 young people were among the pilgrims who attended the Mass in brilliantly sunny weather.

“Next year, world youth day, which will be celebrated on Palm Sunday in local churches, will have its culmination in the youth pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela in Spain, Aug. 19-20, where I too will go to meet with them,” the Pope said.

It will be John Paul’s third trip to Spain since he became Pope in October, 1978.

Santiago di Compostela, near the Atlantic coast of northwest Spain, became Catholicism’s third most important shrine after Rome and Jerusalem in the 9th Century, when a grave believed to be that of St. James the Apostle--called Santiago in Spanish--was found there.