WORLD : Shun Drugs, Sex, Pope Pleads
Pope John Paul II, celebrating Mass today with the biggest and most enthusiastic crowd of his African tour, urged young people in Burkina Faso to avoid the seduction of drugs and sex.
Young people must “face the plagues of modern times,” the Pope said on the second to last stop of his five-nation tour of the impoverished Sahel region, south of the Sahara desert. They must resist “the seduction of drugs and misunderstood sexuality,” he told the crowd in a dust-blown field at the Yagma Marian shrine, 9 miles from the capital, Ouagadougou.
At the Mass the Pope also spoke against artificial birth control, abortion and euthanasia.
Church officials said they expected 300,000 people for the Mass, but reporters put the number at about 100,000.
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