Pope Receives Cakes, Warm Wishes on His 65th Birthday

Pope John Paul II celebrated his 65th birthday Saturday, receiving marzipan-topped cakes and well-wishing songs and delivering a warning to young people against the dangers of modern life, including that of “unbridled sex.”

Speaking to a heavily attended youth rally in Namur, southeast of Brussels, the pontiff enumerated what he called “the traps which our society sets to exploit the weak and which the devil sets to exploit our weaknesses and our passions:

“The promise of easy immediate pleasure, unbridled sex, drugs of all kinds, artificial gadgets, expensive fashions, thought-destroying noise, illusion-mongers and dream merchants, every modern idol which fosters our egoism in all its aspects.”

Songs and Chants

Everywhere he traveled during the day--to Mechelen and Nabur, and here in the Marian shrine of Beauraing--tens of thousands greeted him with birthday songs and chants of the Polish greeting stolat (live 100 years).

Obviously buoyed by the reception, he responded with his own best wishes “to all who have their birthday today.” At a formal meeting with Belgium’s Roman Catholic bishops, the Pope was so touched by their birthday song that he chatted informally with them before delivering his prepared remarks.

He told the bishops that steps taken by the Vatican Council II to modernize church practices have caused occasional “disarray and division” among Roman Catholics.

“The Second Vatican Council determined the basic principles and means that the church has to carry out an adapted spiritual renewal,” John Paul said.

John Paul has called for a special synod of bishops, to be held in the Vatican this November, to examine the effects of Vatican II.