Pope Benedict XVI pleaded today for Christians to be better protected in the Middle East as he addressed a crowd of 20,000 in Jordan.

The pontiff, giving the first open-air Mass of his tour of the Middle East, called for the embattled Christian community to be given material and moral assistance.

Speaking at a sports stadium in Amman, the Jordanian capital, he urged the "ancient communities" to persevere in their faith despite the hardships threatening them. Christians make up less than 2 per cent of the overwhelmingly Muslim population of Jordan.

“The Catholic community here is deeply touched by the difficulties and uncertainties which affect the people of the Middle East,” the Pope said, in English.

“May you never forget the great dignity which derives from your Christian heritage, or fail to sense the loving solidarity of all your brothers and sisters in the church throughout the world,” he added.

The church has become alarmed by the declining numbers of Christians in the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East, driven out by war and economic hardship.

Many Iraqi Christians were forced to flee the sectarian violence that followed the 2003 US-led war in Iraq. Muslim militants targeted Iraqi Christians, many of whom were killed, raped or kidnapped. Several churches were bombed, and clergy were killed.

Palestinian Christians, squeezed between Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land, have been leaving in high numbers — mainly to the West. In Egypt, which has the biggest Christian community in the region at about 10 percent of the country’s 76 million people, Coptic Christians have strained relations with Muslims and violent clashes have erupted between the two sides in recent years.

The Pope’s week-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land is his first trip as pontiff to the Middle East, where he has faced sharp criticism from Muslims and Jews.

Benedict angered many in the Muslim world three years ago when he quoted a medieval text that characterised some of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman", particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith". When he arrived in Jordan on Saturday, the Pope expressed his deep respect for Islam and hoped that the Catholic Church would be a force for peace.

He will also have to tread carefully when he arrives in Israel tomorrow for the final, four-day leg of his tour, which will also take him to the Palestinian territories.

Earlier this year, the Pope provoked outrage among Jews when he revoked the excommunication of an ultraconservative bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Catholics from across the Middle East attended Sunday’s Mass. Many held up the flags of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other countries and applauded the Pope’s words and shouted out his name. Forty Iraqi children having their first communion wore long white robes as they waved the Iraqi and Vatican flags.

Father Raymond Mousalli, an Iraqi priest, said that Iraqis of all faiths must sit together and find peace after years of war.

“The holy father speaks here, and his voice is heard in the Middle East, especially by Iraqi Christians who are suffering a lot,” Father Mousalli said.

Peter Samaan, a 15-year-old Iraqi dressed in a white communion robe, said that he hoped that one day the Pope could travel to Iraq.

“We Christians want to return. We are strangers in this country,” Peter said, adding that his family fled Iraq to avoid persecution.