VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Sunday urged Catholics to rediscover the religious significance of Christmas, saying the holiday should not be dominated by materialism.

The Pope's words at his Sunday blessing to crowds in a rainy St Peter's Square marked the second consecutive day that the Pontiff warned of consumerism just as the Christmas shopping season kicked off in Italy.

"Too often, unfortunately, today's manner of living and perceiving Christmas suffers from a materialistic mentality," he said.

On Saturday, when Roman Catholics marked the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the leader of the 1.1 billion member Church said adults were only deceiving children by introducing them at ever younger ages into a life of unbridled materialism.

Too many children were growing up in a world saturated with "false models of happiness" and being lured by unscrupulous adults into what he called the "dead-end street of consumerism," he said on Saturday.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella)