Hundreds of thousands of sweltering pilgrims crammed into central Madrid for a giant open-air mass Tuesday, launching a million-strong, six-day Catholic youth party for Pope Benedict XVI. The rock-festival style celebration of World Youth Day has drawn faithful from 193 nations, according to organizers — but also criticism in the midst of Spain’s economic hardship. From a vast white stage adorned with an image of Mary and Jesus before City Hall in the emblematic Plaza Cibeles square, Madrid’s archbishop, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, celebrated the inaugural mass in the evening.Some 800 bishops, archbishops and cardinals from around the world joined him, many shielding themselves from the sun with white umbrellas. Another 8,000 priests concelebrated the mass. The service, accompanied by hundreds of choristers, was dedicated to the late Pope John Paul II, who launched the first festival in 1986 as a way to revitalize the faith among young Catholics.

In homage to John Paul II, a vial of blood taken in the final days of his life in 2005 was placed on a pulpit used in the service, inside a sculpture in the form of an open book. Railing against “rampant moral and spiritual relativism,” the Madrid archbishop urged young people in the 21st century to follow the path of the “humble, simple pilgrim”. “Globalization, new technologies of communication, the economic crisis, and so on, have determined how you are, for the better and, often, for the worse,” he said in his homily. “Not finding a solid foundation for your lives in today’s society and culture, nor often in the family, it is powerfully tempting for you to go to the limit and lose direction on the path of life,” he warned. Before the mass, pop music blared out for hours from massive speakers in the city centre as young pilgrims, many wearing yellow World Youth Day T-shirts and floppy hats, gathered in temperatures of 35 C (95 F). “Basically John Paul is my idol, he is the patron of World Youth Day,” said Desmond Jansen, a 23-year-old IT technician from Malaysia. “I was transformed into a better person after the previous World Youth Day in Australia.”

Hiroshi Niwuya, a 22-year-old student from Osaka, Japan said: “I really wanted to come here for the pope because there are few Christians in Japan and I wanted to be surrounded by others who share my faith.”

The Church opened 200 white confessionals in the form of boat sails along the main thoroughfare through Madrid’s Retiro park, where priests and bishops from across the world listened — in 30 languages — to confessions.

The 84-year-old pontiff, spiritual leader to the Roman Catholic Church’s claimed 1.2 billion followers, lands Thursday to join the final four days of the party.

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