Pope Francis Holds Rio Mass For Three Million

Pope Francis has ended an historic trip to his home continent with a Mass on Copacabana Beach that drew a reported three million people.

Nearly the entire 4km (2.5 mile) crescent of Copacabana's famous beach overflowed with people, some of them throwing T-shirts, flags and football shirts into the pontiff's open-sided car as he drove by.

Even the normally stern-faced Vatican bodyguards smiled as they jogged alongside his vehicle.

Many of the crowd had spent the night on the beach, with pilgrims wrapped in flags and sleeping bags.

Up to three million people were on Copacabana Beach for the Mass

The Vatican has said more than three million people were expected to attend the Mass, based on information from World Youth Day organisers and local authorities. World Youth Day was on Saturday.

That was far higher than the one million at the last World Youth Day vigil in Madrid in 2011.

Among the crowds were presidents Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Argentina's Cristina Kirchner and Evo Morales of Bolivia.

Pope Francis also held a Mass on the beach on Friday.

Pope Francis waves to the crowds from his car

The 76-year-old pontiff will later meet bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean before leaving for Rome on Sunday night.

During his visit, he criticised the "intellectual" message of the church and told Brazil's bishops that people needed to hear simpler messages of love, forgiveness and mercy.

He said: "At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people

"Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery."

In a speech outlining the kind of church he wants, Francis asked bishops to reflect on why hundreds of thousands of Catholics have left the church for Protestant and Pentecostal congregations that have grown exponentially in recent decades in Brazil, particularly in its favelas.

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

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

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