SÃO PAULO
Pope Francis has celebrated mass at the final major event of the Roman Catholic World Youth Day (WYD) festival at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro in front of crowds that, organizers say, numbered over three million people.
The majority of the vast crowd -- consisting of local Catholics and visiting pilgrims from across Brazil and around 150 countries from five continents -- had arrived on Saturday evening and spent the night on the beachfront for the Vigil, a key event for the week-long festival.
WYD 2013 was declared the biggest-ever edition of the Catholic festival, as well as Brazil's busiest-ever tourist event -- outstripping both the city's Carnival and New Year celebrations in terms of tourist numbers.
Before arriving at the Final Mass, Pope Francis was flown specially in an army helicopter to view Rio's famous Christ the Redeemer statue from the air.
Every inch of the 4km-long (2.5 miles) beach was covered by pilgrims camping out overnight in sleeping bags and tents for the Vigil, which culminated in Sunday morning's Final Mass -- a last send-off from Pope Francis before a number of closed events during Sunday.
The event was also attended by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, as well as her Argentine and Bolivian counterparts -- Cristina Kirchner and Evo Morales.
Pope Francis told those gathered: "The experience of this meeting cannot be locked away in your lives […] it would be like cutting the oxygen to a burning flame. Faith is a flame that is made more alive the more we share it. Do not fear to go and take Christ everywhere […] including where people seem most distant and indifferent."
The pontiff will hold his final closed services and meet volunteers before leaving Rio, and Brazil, at around 7 p.m. on Sunday evening.
On Saturday the pontiff told crowds to head to the streets and protest to make a better world: "Don't be cowards, get involved, go for it. Jesus didn't stay locked up in a cocoon. Go to the streets as Jesus did."
The pope had already alluded to the major anti-government protests in June, which demanded major social and political reforms. He said protests "for a better world" should continue, and not only in Brazil, as long as they remained orderly and in line with Christian values.
He also urged bishops and clerics to shun the comfort of their parishes and to go to the favelas -- Brazil's poorest communities, which the pontiff visited earlier on his week-long visit to Brazil and urged they be brought into mainstream church life.
- Pope announces next WYD location
At Sunday’s Final Mass Pope Francis also announced the location of the next WYD, to be held in 2016, as Kraków, Poland, in what analysts see as a major hat tip to Pope John Paul II, who was Archbishop of Kraków before becoming Pope.
John Paul II -- born Karol Józef Wojtyla -- was also born in the nearby Polish town of Wadowice.
WYD usually now takes place every three years but on this occasion was brought forward by a year to 2013 to avoid clashing with next year's World Cup, also being hosted in Brazil.
However, the next festival, in 2016, now appears like to clash time-wise with the Olympics, which are being hosted in Rio de Janeiro.
- Protests, botched venue fail to disrupt WYD
Pope Francis, in Brazil on the first overseas trip of his papacy, led the Vigil and Final Mass from Copacabana Beach after a specially-built venue in the west of the city was waterlogged and declared unfit for use after days of rain.
Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes admitted on Thursday that the city's planning for WYD had fallen below expectations, and now says the area -- which was cleared of species-rich Atlantic Forest and is far from the city centre -- will be given over to residential buildings for poor communities.
Despite some protests -- both on the streets and on social media -- and the fiasco surrounding the botched Campus Fidei venue, the Brazilian government and the Vatican are both likely to be delighted by the huge turnout and the overall perception of the visit, which has shown Brazil, the Pope and the Church in a largely positive light.
Although some anti-Church and anti-government demonstrations, including a planned Slutwalk on Saturday, did take place during the event, the only protests to turn violent were those on Monday, the first day of the Pope’s visit, after the pontiff was officially welcomed at the Guanabara Palace by President Dilma Rousseff, Rio State Governor Sérgio Cabral and Mayor Paes -- all of whom have been focuses of the recent mass protests.
The country’s Ministry of Tourism has also announced that the event has so far proved the busiest in Brazilian history -- with the two million visitors expected to spend around 1.2 billion Brazilian reais (around $530 million).
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