ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE – Pope Benedict XVI said Friday that the Roman Catholic Church must not imitate Pentecostal movements that have enjoyed huge success in Africa, as he headed for his second visit to the continent.

The Church “must not imitate those communities,” Benedict told journalists aboard the plane en route to Benin. He added that such movements “have success, but little stability.”

The Vatican has faced a major challenge from Pentecostal and other evangelical movements in Africa, with their lively, down-to-earth services seen by many as more relevant to their lives.

Benedict spoke of the Catholic Church as having a “participative liturgy, but not sentimental.”

The Church “must have a simple, concrete, understandable message,” he said.

“It is important that Christianity not appear as a difficult system, European, that others cannot understand,” he said.

Of Africa in general, he spoke of a “vitality in the future” on a continent with the world’s fastest growing population.

“Africa’s problems are not yet overcome, but there is a brightness, a positive outlook on life, a youth population which is full of hope and also humour and joy,” the pontiff said, as opposed to “relativism that restrains life and extinguishes hope.”

He also paid tribute to Benin, a country of some nine million people considered both a Catholic stronghold as well as a voodoo heartland, calling it a “country at peace”.

Benedict spoke of a “good co-existence” between Christians, Muslims and followers of traditional religions.

The pontiff is expected to be welcomed by tens of thousands of Benin citizens as well as pilgrims from West Africa and beyond during the three-day visit that will culminate with a mass Sunday in a stadium in the economic capital Cotonou.

Benedict left Rome on Friday morning and was to arrive in Cotonou at around 1400 GMT.

The trip is also to take the 84-year-old pontiff to Ouidah, a city heavy with symbolism as a centre of voodoo and which served as a major slave trading port.

The highlight of the pope’s trip to a region that has the world’s fastest growing number of Catholics will be the formal signing on Saturday of an apostolic exhortation called “The Pledge for Africa”.