Pope Benedict XVI urged crowds in Palermo, Sicily yesterday to turn their backs on the “deadly path” of Mafia membership.

“Do not give in to the temptations of the Mafia,” the Pontiff said to applause from a crowd that organisers said numbered 26,000 young people, gathered in one of Palermo’s main squares.

“Do not be scared of confronting evil!” he added.

“Together you will be a forest of faith,” capable of “profoundly renewing your land,” he said.

Earlier in the day Pope Benedict had celebrated an open-air Mass in the Sicilian capital before tens of thousands of pilgrims, but had disappointed anti-Mafia campaigners with an address they felt did not go far enough.

The Pontiff had called on Sicilians, dogged by Mafia extortion and intimidation, to be “ashamed of evil, which offends God and man” and for the effects of organised crime to be brought into the open.

But Father Toni Dell’Olio, a leader of Libera, Italy’s largest anti-Mafia organisation, welcomed the pope’s latest remarks.

“This is exactly what we expected, a clear statement that the Mafia and Christianity are incompatible”, he said.

The clergy, he hoped, would “put into practice these statements from the pope.”

Before the visit to Sicily, anti-Mafia campaigners had called on the pope to deliver a strong condemnation of organised crime.

Pope Benedict’s first visit to Sicily since becoming pope in 2005 had raised hopes among campaigners that he would help their struggle against the ever-pervasive Cosa Nostra.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church also urged the pilgrims in Palermo’s Foro Italico square to have faith, despite the “shortage of jobs, uncertainty about the future, moral and physical suffering, and organised crime” in Sicily.

“I am here to give you a strong incentive not to be afraid to testify clearly to human and Christian values, so deeply rooted in faith and in the history of this land and its people,” he said.

Organisers said around 200,000 people had packed into the square and surrounding streets to attend the mass, celebrated by the pope in bright sunshine against the backdrop of the glittering Mediterranean.

“People of Sicily, look to the future with hope,” the Pontiff told them. “Live with courage the values of the Gospel to shine a light on good. With the power of God, everything is possible.”

The Pope arrived at Palermo’s Falcone Borsellino airport, named after two judges killed by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992, before travelling through the city in his popemobile.

Residents hung banners from their houses welcoming the pope, but the atmosphere was subdued, in part due to restrictions on movement and a heavy security presence.

In 1995, Pope Benedict XVI’s predecessor Jean Paul II – on the last of his five visits to Sicily – attacked Mafia killings, saying “no man, no human association, no Mafia can change nor trample under foot the right to life.”

Pope Benedict XVI has in the past condemned the Camorra, the dominant organised crime group in Naples. During an open-air Mass in the southern city in 2007, he called for “a struggle against all forms of violence.”

The Italian Episcopal Conference, the organisation of Italian bishops, issued a report on the Mafia earlier this year, calling it a “real cancer” and “one of the deepest wounds” in Italy’s more impoverished southern regions.

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