Pope leads eco-friendly festival
Pope Benedict has joined a quarter of a million young Roman Catholics in Italy, at the shrine of Loreto, for an ecologically friendly youth festival.
The gathering is a run-up to next summer's Catholic World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney, Australia, which the Pope plans to attend.
The accent is on teaching young people to protect the environment.
The Pope has deplored the forest fires which have swept southern Europe, many of them due to negligence and arson.
Each participant in the Loreto festival is getting a free knapsack made out of recycled plastic and containing a hand-cranked battery charger, plates and cutlery made from bio-degradable plastic and bags for tying up their rubbish when they leave.
The Pope is also practising what he preaches.
He is installing solar panels on the roof of the main audience hall at the Vatican and is paying for a forestry project to offset the Vatican's carbon emissions.
clipped from: news.bbc.co.uk 