MEXICO CITY -- On a demanding 11-day trip to the Americas, the self-described "old" Pope John Paul II was looking toward the future -- and to what he can leave behind to the new generations of Catholics around the world.

In Toronto July 23-29 to celebrate World Youth Day, the pope had words of hope and encouragement for young people who have experienced disillusion in the world and in their church.

In Guatemala and Mexico he proclaimed new saints, highlighting the importance of works of mercy and the place of native peoples in the universal church.

On each stop, the pope brought a disarmingly simple message, unburdened by theological analysis and far removed from disputes that have sometimes divided Catholics in recent years.

"Only Christ ... is the faithful friend who never lets us down," he told half a million cheering young people in Toronto.

He sympathized with their problems and apprehensions, then prodded the young to make a personal choice: Embrace the Gospel and bring its healing touch to a world that seems broken in many ways.

The young people called the pope their "compass," an accurate description of a man trying to point to a few basic elements of hope and faith in the post-Sept. 11 environment.

At times it seemed he was looking back and summing up the essential moral lessons of his own time -- the spiritual warrior of the 20th century passing the baton to "a new generation of builders."

"The future is in your hearts and in your hands," he told them.

His words at the closing World Youth Day Mass deploring sex abuse scandals in the church marked the first time this pope addressed the crisis of the past year in such a public forum. But characteristically, he stressed the fact that the vast majority of priests have been untouched by such scandal.

When he urged youths to trust their ministers, the young people cheered, and some of their priests shed tears of appreciation. Clearly, the priesthood looms large in Pope John Paul's vision of the future church.

Although the pope looked and sounded better in Toronto than he had in months, many young participants felt this might be their last such encounter with Pope John Paul.

When he announced the next World Youth Day would be held in Germany in 2005, he did not say -- as he has remarked in past years -- that, God willing, he would see them there. Perhaps mindful of his frail health and the strain of travel, he said simply that the spirit of World Youth Day was now in the hands of the young people themselves.

In Guatemala and Mexico, the legacy he was leaving behind was new saints: the first Central American saint in Pedro de San Jose Betancur, a missionary among the poor of Guatemala who is known popularly as Hermano Pedro, and the first American indigenous saint in Juan Diego, the peasant who saw the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

By extending his trip to the two Latin American countries, the pope showed he recognized how much these ceremonies meant to local Catholics, who experience the faith largely through models of holiness and not theological teachings.

"The pope is canonizing simple people of great faith. This is very important for the people here, especially the indigenous, and for their traditions of popular piety," Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga told Catholic News Service.

The pope wants those traditions preserved in the 21st century, as Latin American societies become more globalized and fragmented. That's part of his vision of the future, too.

Be holy like these saints, he told his audiences, and put your faith into action.

In Mexico, this simple message was accompanied by a burst of liturgical panache that featured dancers in feathered Aztec costumes who hailed the canonization of St. Juan Diego with native drums and maracas.

In a way, the three stops on this 97th papal trip were emblematic of Pope John Paul's pontificate: World Youth Day was the pope's invention, and saint making is one of his fixations.

It was a minimalist journey, with a few big events that allowed the aging pontiff to focus on what he considers the key themes for Christians of any age: holiness and charity, love for God and one's neighbor.