FRANCE/ THE VATICAN: At the end of a 2½-hour open-air Mass presided over by Pope John Paul II in the Marian shrine of Lourdes yesterday morning, many of the younger pilgrims broke into spontaneous celebratory applause that involved rhythmic clapping, shouting and even running water fights.
As the younger pilgrims packed away their fold-up chairs, papal flags and sleeping bags, it was hard not to contrast their energy with the frail but determined figure of the 84-year-old Pope who during his two-day visit to Lourdes often looked tired and ailing.
It may well be that, not for the first time, the Pope was buoyed by the encouragement, much of it very vocal, of the faithful.
He may well also have been moved by the splendid setting for yesterday's Mass, held on the tree-lined prairie just outside Lourdes, framed by the foothills of the Pyrenees and with the fast-flowing, clear water of the Gave river gurgling nearby.
The Pope's second visit to Lourdes and his seventh to France did not focus on political or pastoral concerns.
He came ostensibly to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the definition of the Dogma of Immaculate Conception. He also travelled as a sick and ailing pilgrim, one of the hundreds of thousands who annually travel to Lourdes in search of spiritual solace, if not a miracle cure.
Indeed, the most poignant image of the weekend came shortly after his arrival on Saturday when, as he kneeled to pray in front of the Grotto, his arthritic knees gave way beneath him and he began to fall.
Rescued in time by his private secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope had amply illustrated the words of his own brief speech at the Grotto, a speech that was read for him by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray.
"I am here with you, dear brothers and sisters, as a pilgrim to Our Lady.With you I share a time of life marked by physical suffering, yet not for that reason any less fruitful in God's wondrous plan," he said.
"In carrying out my apostolic ministry I have always trusted greatly in the offerings, prayers and sacrifices of the suffering."
This was indeed a weekend marked by the triumph of the papal will over the all-too-weakened papal flesh.
At one point during yesterday's Mass, as his voice dried up and he appeared to be struggling for breath, the Pope was heard to mutter in Polish: "Help me. I have to finish".
Encouraged by the shouts and cheers of the crowd, he doggedly stuck to his script, finishing a homily in which he highlighted the meaning of the 1858 Marian apparitions to the young Bernadette Soubirous.
He said: "Appearing here, Mary entrusted her message to a young girl, as if to emphasise the special mission of women in our own time, tempted as it is by materialism and secularism: to be in today's society a witness of those essential values which are seen only with the eyes of the heart".