1 million greet pope in Ecuador

Francis started his last full day in Ecuador by saying an open-air Mass for almost a million people on the grounds of a former airport in the capital, Quito.

Pope Francis especially asked that policy makers show respect and solidarity in protecting the great environmental diversity in Ecuador, which is home to both mountains and coastlands, as well as the Galapagos Islands.

Instead of reprimanding the younglings, Vatican bodyguards and Ecuadorian police picked up kids so Francis could kiss and bless them.

Wearing a white poncho over his white cassock to warm him against the Andean wind, Francis welcomed Bolivia’s social reforms.

The pope’s comments come on the heels of right-wing protests in Ecuador following government proposals to raise taxes on inheritance and capital gains.

QUITO, Ecuador – In his second homily on his weeklong homecoming to his native continent, Pope Francis has called for a “revolution” of evangelization in Latin America.

Late Monday night, the Pope said goodnight and went to bed. “Now the Bolivian people receive you with joy and hope”, said Morales, wearing a dark suit with an indigenous pattern embroidered around the lapels.

Olimpia Herrera, a 62-year-old teacher, said she was convinced by the pope’s words on family, which “we needed because there are many homes that are broken up”. “He is somebody who has really changed the church, changed young people’s way of thinking”, said Veronica Calderon, a 23-year-old civil engineering student who had arrived at six in the morning the day before the Mass.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said his goodbyes to Francis as the pope walked up the stairs of the plane.

“That visit pushed us to renew our commitment to evangelizing”, he said.

“Proselytism is a caricature of evangelization”.

This, he said, “is no longer a mere recommendation, but rather a requirement”, because of the harm “we have inflicted on (the earth) by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed it”.

The people of Ecuador took a step in this direction in the fall of 2008, when they became the first country to adopt a constitution that legally recognizes the “Rights of Nature” to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution”. In Bolivia, 77 percent were Catholic in 2014 compared to 85 percent in 1970.

(AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia). Faithful hold a cross and a doll of Pope Francis as they wait for the Pontiff’s arrival to the Catholic University in Quito, Ecuador, Tuesday, July 7, 2015.

Pope Francis praised the conviction and strength in the “cry for freedom” during the nation’s struggle from European influence 200 years ago. He noted that Bicentennial Park commemorates Ecuador’s independence from Spain and called on Catholics to set aside their differences and be “builders of unity”.

The Mass featured readings in Quichua, the native language most spoken in Ecuador, and Ecuadorean vestments for the pope.

Argentine-born Francis spent most of Monday in the coastal city of Guayaquil, delivering a Mass to some 800,000 people before going to a Jesuit-run school to visit a friend he had not seen for three decades.

Entering the area, Francis stopped the popemobile for a brief moment to hug an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

A water-logged crowd estimated by officials at half a million awaits the pope at Quito’s Bicentennial Park. They were rewarded with a pre-dawn deluge that sent some 20 people to paramedics with hypothermia, said city operations director Cristian Rivera.

Two hydrosuction trucks worked to remove puddles from several inundated sections of the park, Rivera said.

“The desire to increase is human, but it is to service that we are called”, he said. What is notable, experts say, is how the pope has managed to sound social justice themes that overlap traditionally leftist leaders in South America who otherwise have been at odds with the church. Pontiff met this morning with thousands of members of the Association of Italian Catholic Guides and Scouts (AGESCI) in St. Peter’s Square.