Agencies

Melbourne, Jul 21: While still on his weeklong trip to Australia, Pope Benedict XVI has said that his visit to the country for World Youth Day has been an 'unforgettable experience'.

The 81-year-old pontiff said that the events during World Youth Day provided him a wonderful, spiritual experience.

"Here in Australia, this 'great south land of the Holy Spirit', all of us have had an unforgettable experience of the spirit's presence and power in the beauty of nature," News.com.au quoted him, as saying.

He also called for renewal of the world and the church as he celebrated the final mass of the event.

"In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading," he said.

"An interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.

"How many of our contemporaries have built broken cisterns in desperate search for meaning - the ultimate meaning that only love can give."

"The church also needs this renewal. She needs your faith, your idealism and your generosity so that she can always be young in the spirit," he added.