COLOGNE, Germany (AP) -- More than 1 million Roman Catholic young people who had camped out overnight in an enormous field welcomed Benedict XVI on Sunday for the concluding Mass of his four-day trip to Germany, his first foreign travel as pope.
As he began his homily, calling on the pilgrims and visitors to World Youth Day to make wise use of the freedom God had given them, the sun broke through the thick, gray clouds.
"Freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total autonomy, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness so that we ourselves can become true and good," he said.
He said there is a "strange forgetfulness of God," while at same time the sense of frustration and dissatisfaction has led to a "new explosion of religion."
The Catholic World Youth Day 2005 concluded today with a open-air mass by Pope Benedict XVI at the Marienfeld, about 15 km west of Cologne.

Speaking to some one million pilgrims from about 200 countries the Pope called for a "return to God" . In his sermon, he condemned the commercialisation of faith and said that "Religion constructed on a 'do-it-yourself' basis cannot ultimately help us".

He announced that the next World Youth Day will be held in Sydney and concluded with short addresses in nine languages in which he called upon the faithful to "walk together in unity".

A journalist working for the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel described the speech  this way: "First faith, then morality".

The Pope has been in his native Germany since Thursday. During his visit he met with high ranking  politicians, made the first ever visit of a Pope to a German synagogue and spoke to representatives of the Muslim community.