|PIC1|Pope Benedict XVI spoke out against increasing secularism in the West and warned that it could turn into a “desert of godlessness” in his Easter message on Good Friday.

In his address, the Pope said that attempts to remove religion from public life were akin to the way the mob at mocked Jesus before he was crucified.

"Religious sentiments … [are seen as] unwelcome leftovers of antiquity … held up to scorn and ridicule," he said.

“We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink.”

The Pope was speaking at a ceremony held in the Coliseum in Rome. Earlier in the day he visited survivors from the L’Aquila earthquake which has killed at least 289 people.

During the evening service he said, “Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode.

“Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed.”

The Pope also used his address to speak out against injustice against women and prayed that Christians would grow in faith in response to rising secularism.