Pope Francis has completed a historic trip to his home continent by celebrating mass to three million people on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach.

The colossal crowds cheered the first Latin American pope in a remarkable response to his message that the Catholic Church must shake itself up and get out into the streets to find the faithful.

Nuns mixed with bikini-clad young women as nearly the entire 2.5-mile crescent of Copacabana’s broad beach in Rio overflowed with people, some of them taking an early morning dip in the Atlantic and others tossing flags and football shirts into the pontiff’s open-sided car as he drove by.

 

Francis worked the crowd, kissing babies, taking a sip of mate tea handed up to him and catching gifts on the fly.

Even the normally stern-faced Vatican bodyguards let smiles slip as they jogged alongside his car, caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Many of the crowd had spent the night on the beach, an all-night slumber party to end World Youth Day that had a festive Latin air, with pilgrims wrapped in flags and sleeping bags to ward off the cold.

They danced, prayed and sang – and stood in long lines in front of the armadas of portable bathrooms along the beachfront.

‘We were dying of cold but it was worth it,’ said Lucrecia Grillera, an 18-year-old from Cordoba, Argentina, where Francis lived for a time before becoming pope.

‘It was a tiring day, but it was a great experience.’

By morning, the beach and adjoining Atlantic Avenue looked like an improvised refugee camp plunked down in the middle of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Copacabana’s famous mosaic sidewalks were strewn with trampled cardboard, plastic bags, empty water bottles and cookie wrappers and the stench of garbage and human waste hung in the humid air.

Vendors hawking World Youth Day trinkets, t-shirts, hats and flags did brisk business as pilgrims snapped up souvenirs before heading home.

Jehovah’s Witnesses stood by stands stocked with pamphlets on ‘What does the Bible really teach,’ but they had few takers.

The Vatican said more than three million people were on hand for the Mass, based on information from World Youth Day organisers and local authorities.

Not all of them were paying attention to the Mass: children posed for random photos with people holding flags, snoozed and packed up their makeshift camps.

Finding food was a core concern, with long lines of bedraggled pilgrims snaking out of cafes and ice cream vendors mobbed by youths starved for breakfast.

The presidents of Brazil, Francis’ native Argentina, Bolivia and Suriname were on hand for the Mass, as were the vice presidents of Uruguay and Panama.

Many of those at the vigil had tears in their eyes as they listened to Francis’ call for them to not be ‘part-time Christians’ and to build up their church like his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, was called to do.

‘Jesus offers us something bigger than the World Cup!’ Francis said, drawing cheers from the crowd in this football-mad nation.

He urged young Catholics to go out and spread their faith ‘to the fringes of society, even to those who seem farthest away, most indifferent.’

‘The church needs you, your enthusiasm, your creativity and the joy that is so characteristic of you!’ he said to applause.

The Pope was set to return to Rome tonight after a week-long trip, once he had met the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean and held a thank-you audience with some of the 60,000 volunteers who organised the youth festival.

‘It was such an excellent week, everybody was in such good spirit, you could just feel a sense of peace,’ said Denise da Silva, a Rio de Janeiro Catholic who was sitting alone on the beach Sunday morning, a Brazilian flag painted on her face.

According to census data, the number of Catholics in Brazil dipped from 125million in 2000 to 123million in 2010, with the church’s share of the total population dropping from 74 per cent to 65 per cent.

During the same time period, the number of evangelical Protestants and Pentecostals skyrocketed from 26million to 42million, increasing from 15 per cent to 22 per cent of the population in 2010.

The Rev. Jean-Luc Zadroga, a Benedictine monk who was leading a group of 14 students from a Catholic university in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, said it was clear Francis had connected with the crowd, particularly the locals.

‘He’s really trying to reach out to Catholics who have fallen away from the church or disappointed with the church and I think it’s working,’ he said.

 

Read more: Daily Mail