The Times reports that Pope Benedict XVI yesterday ended a two-day youth rally by urging the young to “save the planet before it is too late”.

Addressing half a million young Catholics camped out in a sea of tents and sun hats at the shrine of Loreto, near Ancona, on the Adriatic coast, the Pope – dressed in bright green vestments – said that it fell to the young to save the planet from development that upset “nature’s delicate equilibrium”.