Societies exclude God at their peril: Pope tells Czech crowd

POPE BENEDICT XVI told tens of thousands of faithful that societies exclude God at their peril yesterday, pressing ahead with a pilgrimage to nudge the ex-communist Czech Republic back to its religious roots.

“History has demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions,” Benedict said.

“Man needs to be liberated from material oppressions, but more profoundly, he must be saved from the evils that afflict the spirit,” he said.

Church organisers estimated that 120,000 people packed a field beside an airport in Brno for what was expected to be the biggest turnout of his trip to the heavily secular country.