Pope says Warsaw mass, visits Polish Black Madonna

WARSAW, May 26 (Reuters) Pope Benedict holds his first outdoor mass in Poland today at the same spot where his predecessor John Paul electrified his compatriots in 1979 by encouraging them to defy their communist rulers.

A huge cross towers over the altar erected on Pilsudski Square in central Warsaw, as one did back then, for the mass expected to draw a million faithful in this traditionally Catholic country.

At his mass, John Paul quoted a psalm asking the Holy Spirit ''to renew the face of the earth ...'' and then added '' ... of this land.'' Inspired by him, the Solidarity trade union was born the following year and Poland shook off communism a decade later.

Today's democratic Poland, now a member of the European Union, no longer needs veiled calls to end a dictatorship and Benedict is hardly the rousing speaker his predecessor was.

Church officials will be watching to see if Benedict draws the same turnout as John Paul did, especially since the welcome for him on Thursday was warm but notably sparse.

''I have come to follow in the footsteps of his life, from his boyhood until his departure for the memorable conclave of 1978,'' Benedict said of John Paul in his greeting in Polish.

There were noticeably fewer people lining the streets into Warsaw than the hundreds of thousands who used to turn out for John Paul.

But the few thousand Poles who greeted the German-born pontiff at the airport were delighted when he began his arrival speech in clear Polish.

After the mass, Benedict will fly by helicopter to Czestochowa in southern Poland to visit the Jasna Gora shrine with its revered Black Madonna icon.

He will end the day in Krakow, where John Paul served as a priest, bishop and cardinal until he was elected pope in 1978.

There he will be the guest of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was John Paul's personal secretary for 26 years and now ranks as Poland's most powerful cleric even though he is neither its primate nor the head of its bishops' conference.

Krakow residents are eager to see if he appears at a main window in the archbishop's palace to address the crowd below. John Paul used to do that during his visits, holding long and lively exchanges with students and other faithful.

Benedict, 79, undertook his four-day tour to honour John Paul and build a rapport with Poland, a deeply Catholic country that both he and his predecessor have said could help revive Christian beliefs and values in an increasingly secular Europe.

His visit could also help break down lingering distrust in Poland towards him and Germany, which occupied the country during World War Two and killed vast numbers of Poles and Jews.

In deference to Polish and Jewish sensitivities, Benedict will avoid speaking German except for when he prays on Sunday at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, where 1.5 million people, many of them Jews, were killed during World War Two.

REUTERS DH RN0439