Pope leads pilgrims in Lourdes mass

POPE BENEDICT XVI led tens of thousands of people yesterday in celebrating the 150th anniversary of a peasant girl’s religious visions in Lourdes, where believers in miracles have since prayed for physical or spiritual healing.

Benedict gave a late-morning mass at the Lourdes shrine during a three-day pilgrimage to the French sanctuary.

About 150,000 pilgrims, singing hymns and some shouldering a life-sized crucifix, streamed through the rain-soaked countryside near the Pyrenees to attend the mass on a grassy expanse known as the Lourdes prairie.