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SYDNEY, Australia - Pope Benedict has urged young people to reject the "spiritual desert" that he says is spreading throughout the world.

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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Rob Griffith

Pope Benedict XVI greets pilgrims on his arrival for the Final Mass at Randwick Racecourse during World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, Sunday, July 20 2008.

Benedict said at a mass Sunday before more than 200,000 young Roman Catholic pilgrims that they would be responsible for building a new age free from greed, apathy and selfishness.

He said that along with material wealth a spiritual desert is spreading throughout the world, describing it as an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.

Sunday's Mass wraps up the six-day World Youth Day festival in Sydney that has drawn massive crowds of pilgrims to Australia's largest city.

It has been watched on television by a global audience estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.