Pope Benedict XVI will on Sunday hold mass for over 100 000 people in the southeastern Czech city of Brno on the second day of his landmark visit to the former communist country.

The pope is visiting the country shortly before the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution which toppled Communism in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989.

Brno is the central city of southern Moravia, a region with the highest percentage of believers in the secular Czech Republic. He is the first pope to visit the city since 1777.

The organisers, who expect many foreigners, have chosen an airfield as a venue for the mass and earmarked an area equaling 25 soccer pitches with a maximum capacity of 150 000 people.

During the mass, the pope will consecrate 57 objects, including foundation stones, crosses and statues, while hundreds of priests including reinforcements from Poland and Slovakia will distribute over 100 000 hosts among believers.

The mass will shut seven kilometres of a motorway from 16.00 GMT Saturday to 18.00 GMT Sunday, as well as several streets in Brno.

On Saturday in Prague, the pontiff met Czech President Vaclav Klaus and other top politicians, spoke to an audience of scientists, clerics and artists, and served an evening mass.

For the first time ever, Benedict XVI met Klaus's predecessor Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and hero of the Velvet Revolution who became president after spending years in Communist prisons.

The pope's speeches in the Czech capital focused on the fall of communism, freedom, and also the "wounds" that religion suffered during the Communist rule in 1948-1989.

After coming back from Brno, the pope will attend an ecumenical meeting in Prague and then meet scientists in the evening.

His three-day visit will symbolically end with a mass for an estimated 35 000 people in Stara Boleslav on Monday to mark the feast of St Wenceslas, the Czech martyr and patron saint who was murdered in the town on 28 September, 935.