POPE BENEDICT XVI, giving his first Christmas message, warned the world yesterday of the danger of sliding into spiritual decay amid the dazzling achievements of modern science and technology.

Speaking to 40,000 people gathered in a rainy St Peter’s Square, and millions more around the globe via television, he also urged the world to unite to overcome terrorism, poverty and environmental threats.

The 12-minute message was delivered in a calm, clear voice that contrasted with the husky, laboured words that the world heard from John Paul II a year earlier.

The Pope smiled, blessed the crowds and then launched into a message that quickly arrived at one of the Roman Catholic Church’s central concerns: that modern society, in its quest for technological advances, is losing sight of human values.

“Today we have vast material resources available to us,” he said. “The men of this technological age risk becoming victims of the successes of their intelligence and the results of their operative capabilities, if what they obtain is spiritual atrophy and an emptiness in the heart.

“So it is important for us to open our minds and hearts to the birth of Christ, this event of salvation, which can give new hope to the life of each human being,” he said, looking down on thousands of coloured umbrellas.

It was the first time that the 78-year old Pope had led the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics in their celebration of Christmas. Although his message centred on the idea that modern men and women needed to let religion into their lives, it also touched on crises and conflict in various parts of the world. The Pope mentioned Africa, and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur in particular, along with Latin America, Iraq, the Holy Land, Lebanon and the two Koreas.