Pope John Paul II yesterday held a Mass for an estimated 70,000 members of India's Christian minority in New Delhi as Hindus across the country celebrated the main festival of their religious calendar.
The Mass in Nehru Stadium in the capital coincided with Diwali, the Festival of Lights, when candles are lit to symbolise the triumph of good over evil.
The service was the high point of a papal visit which has been dogged by controversy, with Hindu hard-liners holding a series of protests.
Elements of Hindu ritual - dances, greetings and the lighting of an oil lamp - were integrated into the Mass in a gesture of reconciliation.
The Pope travelled to India to conclude an Asian synod of bishops which began in Rome last year and to present a key document, Ecclesia in Asia,which maps out the church's strategy in Asia for the new millennium. He arrived in New Delhi on Friday and on Saturday met the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has recently sought to lead his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party along a more moderate path.
The Pope's visit has been the focus of protests by Hindu fundamentalists who accuse the church of engaging in forcible conversions.
There have been repeated calls for the Pope to condemn the Roman Catholic Church's missionary activity and to apologise for alleged atrocities committed in the former Portuguese colony of Goa in the Middle Ages.
Despite the exotic dancing and the prayers in Hindi, yesterday's Mass made it clear that the church does not intend to bow under pressure.
In his homily, the Pope quoted the synod document, saying the Catholic Church took root in Europe in the first millennium, in Africa and in the Americas in the second. "May the third Christian millennium witness a great harvest of faith on this vast and vital continent", he added.
In prayers to the Virgin Mary, the Pope said: "To you . . . we entrust the clergy . . . and the laity of the church in Asia; renew and sustain them in a spirit of zeal and in their commitment to the great task of evangelisation and service."
India's 23 million Christians (2.4 per cent of the population) is in decline. Nehru Stadium was yesterday only two-thirds full, and the huge crowds normally witnessed during papal tours have been noticeably absent.
Right-wing Hindu groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Organisation) charge that missionaries use threats and inducements to lure poor Hindus away from their beliefs. They claim that lower-caste Hindus are told that if they convert they will get medical treatment from Christian hospitals and education for their children at church-run schools.
A protest march from Goa to New Delhi organised by the VHP met with scant public response after the government made an appeal for an end to antichurch demonstrations. But Hindu hard-liners have continued their calls for the Pope to bring an end to missionary work in India.
Ecclesia in Asia, however, makes it clear the church aims to press ahead with its evangelisation programme and to spread the Gospel across Asia, the continent with the least number of Catholics. The Pope told 200 Asian bishops on Saturday that the church should continue vigorously to seek to convert the peoples of Asia.
After celebrating Mass, the Pope met other religious leaders in New Delhi. He is due to leave India today for Georgia.