MANILA: Pope Francis said a huge open-air Mass for a rain-drenched crowd of millions in the Philippine capital today, after appealing to the world to ‘learn how to cry’ over the plight of poor, hungry, homeless and abused children.
City officials said some 4 million people were in Manila’s Rizal Park and more in surrounding areas to witness the event that caps Francis’s week-long trip to Asia.
The 78-year-old Pope, wearing a transparent yellow poncho over his white cassock, was driven through the ecstatic crowd in a ‘popemobile’ modified from a jeepney, the most popular mode of transport in the Philippines.
He stopped often along the route to kiss children and bless religious statues on the day the Philippines celebrates the feast of the infant Jesus. The faithful, also wearing ponchos, held up rosaries in a forest of uplifted arms as he passed by. (PTI)
Some people in the capital of Asia’s only predominantly Catholic country had waited during the night for gates to open at dawn. The gates opened nine hours before the start of the Mass, which was due to last nearly three hours.
In his homily, the Pope urged Filipinos to shun ‘social structures which perpetuate poverty, ignorance and corruption’, a theme he stressed when he held talks with President Benigno Aquino on Friday. Aquino attended the Mass.
Francis also took another swipe at the government’s population control efforts, saying the family was under threat from ‘insidious attacks and programmes contrary to all that we hold true and sacred’.
Organisers had said they had expected as many as 6 million people, more than the 5 million who flocked to a Mass there by Pope John Paul 20 years ago.
The Pope’s last full day in the Philippines began with an emotional youth gathering at a Catholic university in Manila, where he was moved by a question posed by a 12-year-old girl who had been abandoned. More Reuters SHS RSA BL1459
