(AFP) – Jul 10, 2008

VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI will head to Australia on Saturday to meet hundreds of thousands of young people celebrating World Youth Day on the planet's most remote continent.

Young people from around the world are expected in Sydney for the event, aimed at portraying the Roman Catholic Church as a youthful, global and enthusiastic community.

"I am sure that from every corner of the Earth, Catholics will unite with me and the youths gathered (in Sydney) to invoke the Holy Spirit... in a variety of languages and cultures," Benedict said during his Angelus prayer at the weekend.

Ahead of his longest journey since becoming pope three years ago, the 81-year-old Benedict urged the entire Church to feel a part of "this new phase of the great youth pilgrimage across the world begun in 1985 by (his predecessor) John Paul II ."

His first public appearance will be at the head of a Sydney Harbour flotilla on July 17 and the trip will culminate in an open-air mass at Sydney's Randwick Racecourse expected to attract hundreds of thousands of pilgrims on July 20.

Australian activists have launched a legal challenge to tough new laws which were introduced to prevent protesters "annoying" Catholic pilgrims during the Pope's Sydney visit.

Under the new laws, police will be able to stop behaviour that "causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants" in World Youth Day, the celebration of Catholic youth that is the focus of the pope's visit.

Civil libertarians have said the laws mean people wearing T-shirts with slogans deemed annoying to Catholics face 5,500 dollar (5,225 US) fines.

Ahead of the trip, Benedict's ninth outside Italy, Vatican officials have noted Australia's secular nature.

"Australia is a nation continent that has been strongly secularised, and where Catholics are a minority," the Vatican's Youth Day pointman Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko said recently.

Benedict, the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, frequently criticises what he describes as the secularism of post-modern societies such as Australia, Europe and North America, saying they have lost a sense of "transcendancy."

Sydney Archbishop George Pell told Vatican Radio that the Catholic Church expected "less hostility" but also "less enthusiasm" for the pope's visit than he encountered in the United States in April.

"For us, indifference is the problem," he said.

As he did during his US trip, Benedict is expected to offer apologies to Australian victims of sexual abuse by priests, Cardinal Pell said on Monday.

The situation of Australia's still struggling Aborigines -- championed by John Paul II during his 1986 visit -- will also be part of Benedict's visit.

He is expected to address the issue during the July 17 welcome ceremony, when Aboriginal dancers and singers will take centre stage.

The aged German pontiff will spend the first four days of his visit recovering from the long flight from Rome at a retreat run by the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei in Sydney's northwestern outskirts.

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