ROME: Hundreds of thousands of young people descending on Madrid this week for the Catholic Church's World Youth Day - which features processions, group prayers and a mass with Pope Benedict - are to get a ''special'' concession.

Church leaders have ordered that anyone during the event who confesses to having had an abortion - a sin punishable by excommunication - will be welcomed back into the Church.

Act of faith ... a woman speaks to a priest at one of the 200 temporary confessionals set up in Madrid's Buen Retiro Park for World Youth Day. Credit:AFP

''Normally, only certain priests have the power to lift such an excommunication but the local diocese has decided to give all the priests taking confession at the event this power,'' said the Pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.

Two hundred white wooden confession booths have been set up in Madrid's Buen Retiro Park for the event, which started on Monday and runs until Sunday.