Beijing Olympics: Pope urges 'rebirth' of Italian quake zone

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday called for a "rebirth" of central Italy's Abruzzo region as he paid an emotional visit to survivors of an earthquake that claimed nearly 300 lives three weeks ago.

"I would like to hug you affectionately one by one," the pontiff said at a tent camp for homeless survivors in the worst-hit town of Onna, near the Abruzzo capital L'Aquila.

"The entire Roman Catholic Church is with me, close to your suffering, sharing your pain for the loss of loved ones," he said. "I encourage everyone, institutions and businesses, to see that this village and this region are reborn."

The village of just 350 inhabitants lost some 40 of its residents in Italy's worst earthquake in a generation.

The April 6 quake killed 295 people and left some 65,000 homeless, more than half of whom were still sheltering in tent camps around L'Aquila, the quake's epicentre some 100 kilometres 60 miles northeast of Rome.

More than 10,000 homes were destroyed.

In L'Aquila itself, the pope commented on charges that thousands of dwellings had collapsed because of lax building practices.

"As a civil society, we must make a serious examination of conscience to ensure that at any moment the level of responsibility is at its height," he said.

"That way, L'Aquila, wounded as she is, can once again take flight," the pope told several hundred people at a military academy just outside L'Aquila, which means "eagle" in Italian.

The military academy in the suburb of Coppito was the site of a mass funeral for 205 of the quake victims on April 10, a day that saw Benedict leading Good Friday observances in Rome and at the Vatican.

Last week Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made the surprise announcement that his cabinet had backed a proposal for the site to host a Group of Eight summit in July over the original choice of La Maddalena, an island off Sardinia. The idea still needs green-lighted from other G8 leaders.

The pontiff, who led Easter celebrations at the Vatican just six days after the disaster, also stopped at a dormitory in L'Aquila where eight students died.

Apart from the human cost, the earthquake also exacted a heavy toll on the medieval and Renaissance architecture that abounds in the Abruzzo region.

The pope visited L'Aquila's Santa Maria di Collemaggio basilica that suffered serious damage.

The church first built in the 13th century, already destroyed and rebuilt after an earthquake in 1703, is a major pilgrimage site as it houses the remains of the "hermit pope" Celestine V.

Celestine, a mountain recluse who was crowned pope in the basilica in 1294, resigned only a few months later in protest over corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, and has since been made a saint.

In homage to his humble predecessor, the pope offered the woollen shawl or pallium he received when he was inaugurated as pontiff in 2005.

Benedict's predecessor Pope John Paul II visited the central Umbria region three months after twin earthquakes killed 12 people and caused serious damage to the famous Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi in 1997.

Rietschel