Pope recalls Nazi terror during Second World War

Birmingham:  Pope Benedict told a mass on Sunday that the world felt "shame and horror" at suffering inflicted by his German homeland in the Second World War and recalled a key air battle that saved Britain from invasion.

At the same mass in a park in the British midlands where the pope spoke of the war, he beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman, one of the most prominent English converts from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.

But in his sermon, on the last day of a four-day visit, before a crowd of more than 50,000 people attending the open-air mass under an intermittent drizzle, he spoke first of the war.

Britain yesterday commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the summer and autumn air conflict which prevented Hitler's planned invasion of Britain.

"For me as one who lived and suffered through the dark days of the Nazi regime in Germany, it is deeply moving to be here with you on this occasion, and to recall how many of your fellow citizens sacrificed their lives, courageously resisting the forces of that evil ideology," he said.

"Seventy years later, we recall with shame and horror the dreadful toll of death and destruction that war brings in its wake, and we renew our resolve to work for peace and reconciliation wherever the threat of conflict looms," he said.

Yesterday was the occasion for the religious centrepiece of the trip — putting Newman, who is venerated in both the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, one step closer to sainthood.

Oxford Movement

Newman, who lived from 1801 to 1890 and became a Catholic in 1845, was a central figure in the Oxford Movement, which tried to move the Church of England closer to Rome

In his homily, the pope praised Newman for defending "the vital place of revealed religion in civil society".

One of the aims of the trip, only the second by a pope to Britain, was to remind one of Europe's most secular countries to beware what he has called "aggressive secularism" and "extreme atheism" that tries to shut God and religion out of public life.

During the trip he made one of his strongest apologies to victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and met five adults molested as children.

The biggest demonstration ever held during one of his trips took place on Saturday when some 10,000 protesters marched through central London carrying anti-pope banners.