COLOGNE, Germany (AFP) – Pope Benedict XVI yesterday used the first foreign trip of his pontificate to urge Muslim leaders to do more to combat the “cruel fanaticism” of terrorism that aimed to poison ties between Christians and Muslims.

The pope was later greeted by at least 700,000 young Catholics at a giant open-air prayer vigil as the penultimate day of his four-day visit swung from the political to the spiritual.

In his address to some 20 leaders of Muslim communities across Germany, the 78-year-old pontiff told them those behind terrorist attacks wished to “poison our relations”.

But delivering the same kind of conciliatory message he had given to Jews the day before, he said he was “profoundly convinced that we must not yield to negative pressures in our midst, but affirm the values of mutual respect, solidarity and peace”.

Reminding them of their “great responsibility” in educating their young, he told the Muslim delegation who met him in Cologne there was “no room for apathy and disengagement, and even less for partiality and sectarianism”.

Young people, like those he would later address at a candle-light prayer vigil as part of the World Youth Day festival, were “the first fruits of a new dawn for humanity”.

Receiving a rapturous reception from the huge gathering that awaited him at Marienfeld, a former mine complex outside Cologne, Benedict told them that “true revolution” to overturn the injustices of history comes “only from God”.

“Only from God does true revolution come, the definitive way to change the world.”

But the pope admitted there was “much that could be criticised” in the Catholic Church. “It is a net with good fish and bad fish.”

Benedict recalled that his predecessor, John Paul II, had “asked pardon for the wrong that was done in the course of history through the words and deeds of the members of the Church.

“In this way he showed us our true image and urged us to take our place, with all our faults and weaknesses, in the procession of the saints,” the pope added.

John Paul II in the last years of his 26-year pontificate apologised for a string of historic wrongs, including the Spanish Inquisition, the overzealousness of missionaries in China, atrocities against Jews and the Church’s contribution to slavery.

The admission came towards the end of an address that was otherwise devoted almost entirely to spiritual matters and the challenges facing the young.

In one of the high points of yesterday’s vigil, Pope Benedict paid homage to John Paul II by naming a giant Church bell for him.

Many of the young pilgrims were spending the night in the huge park to await the return of the pope for a huge open-air mass early today that he is to celebrate with hundreds of bishops, the climax of his visit.

The pope is due to return to Rome this evening at the end of what is being seen as a highly successful visit.

The open-air mass, expected to attract as many as one million pilgrims, is the culmination of the World Youth Day jamboree, invented two decades ago by John Paul II.

The meeting with the Muslim community was a key part of Benedict’s pledge to use his four-month-old pontificate to build “bridges of friendship” with the world’s other monotheistic religions.

Like his message of friendship to Jews at Cologne’s synagogue the day before, his words to Islam’s representatives were warmly welcomed.

“I told the pope that his speech was marvellous and I cried listening to it,” said Muzeyyen Dreessen, a representative of Turkish Muslims, who form the bulk of Germany’s 3.5 million-strong Islamic community and one of three women on the delegation.

“This meeting today was not just a polite meeting, but a clear signal that we need more courage, more mutual trust,” said a member of the delegation, Nadeem Elyas, the president of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.

As he had with the Jewish community, Benedict acknowledged the bloodstained history of relations between Christians and Muslims: “The recollection of these sad events should fill us with shame, for we know only too well what atrocities have been committed in the name of religion.”

“How many pages of history record battles and even wars that have been waged, with both sides invoking the name of God, as if fighting and killing the enemy could be pleasing to Him?”

“The lessons of the past must help us to avoid repeating the same mistakes,” said the pope. “We must seek paths of reconciliation and learn to live with respect for each other’s identity.