He also raged with equal fire against Marxism and capitalism. By focusing solely on material concerns, he said, they “falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God.”

“Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves,” he said. “And this ideological promise has proven false.”

Marxism, he said, left “a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction.” Capitalism, he said, has failed to bridge the “distance between rich and poor” and is “giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.”

But on the whole his speech covered ground familiar to those here — some approving, others not — who followed Cardinal Ratzinger’s long career as theologian and top aide to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

“I like his zeal,” said Maria da Conceição Xavier Cerqueira, a retired postal worker. He was among the faithful, many of whom carried umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun and rosaries to be blessed at an outdoor Mass that Benedict celebrated here on Sunday. “He was a loyal comrade of John Paul II, and it is good that he is here to defend the traditional values of the Catholic Church, which are under attack from all sides.”

Without specifically mentioning liberation theology by name, Benedict, in his speech to the bishops, criticized Catholics who argue that the church’s supreme moral duty is to denounce and resist social injustice. As the Vatican’s senior official on matters of doctrine and faith, he led efforts in the 1980s to stamp out the movement, then quite influential in Latin America, and on Sunday he again warned the clergy not to permit such concerns to eclipse their spiritual duties.

“This political task is not the immediate competence of the church,” he said. “Respect for a healthy secularity — including the pluralism of political opinions — is essential in the authentic Christian tradition.