Pope Francis draws Catholics out in Ecuador for mass

Across the park, Ecuadoran national flags and papal banners waved above the enormous sea of people, cheering, “Francisco!”

Francis, who regularly wades into political issues, urged Correa to promote “dialogue and participation without exclusions.”The pope’s last visit to South America was a triumphant trip to Brazil in 2013 that culminated with three million people gathering along Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro for a mass at the end of a Catholic youth festival””.

(Vatican Radio) In his first homily during his Apostolic Voyage to South America, Pope Francis focused on Mary as a model for families as he spoke about the Gospel account of the wedding at Cana. Under current rules, they are prohibited from receiving communion unless they abstain from sexual relations.

Pope Francis held the first mass of his eight-day Latin American trip with more than 500,000 people Monday in the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil.

The pope said the synod “would consider concrete solutions to the many hard and significant challenges facing families in our time”. “Families today need this miracle”, he added to his prepared text.

The now almost 91-year-old Cortes must have made a strong impression with his work at the Colegio Javier parochial school mentoring young men sent to him by the future pontiff, because their meeting on Monday was the only private one-on-one session that Francis scheduled for his visit to Ecuador.

According to Paredes, Francis hasn’t changed, and his new title and role as leader of the Roman Catholic Church hasn’t changed their friendship. At a preparatory meeting past year they botched conciliatory language on the pastoral care of gay couples.

“The pope hopes this Synod will help people to move from situations of sin to a state of grace; he’s not referring to anything specific”, Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters during the flight Quito to Guayaquil.

Hundreds of thousands of faithful were expected to turn out to see the Argentine-born pontiff, who offered a message of harmony and familial unity at an open air mass Monday in the coastal city of Guayaquil. Thousands of enthusiastic followers packed the route, throwing flower petals, locally made Panama hats and other items at him.

Others came from as far away as Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico.

In his homily, the pope also called for a rekindling of family values and solidarity with the elderly, the abandoned and the unemployed.

“How many of our adolescents and young people sense that [happiness, love, and plenty] are no longer found in their homes?” How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives?

“The time is coming when we will taste love daily, when our children will rediscover the space we share, and our elderly will be present in everyday joys”, he said. Those services are not a type of alms, but rather a genuine “social debt” with respect to the institution of the family, which contributes so greatly to the common good.

It is the first visit by a pontiff to Ecuador in three decades.

In this July 2, 2015 photo released by El Diario in Ecuador, Spanish Priest Francisco Cortes Garcia, affectionately known as “Father Paquito”, talks to reporters at the Javier school where he’s the director and teaches, in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Correa said the reforms will only affect the super-wealthy and accuses his foes of seeking a coup d’etat.

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, which protested against mining and oil exploration in the Amazon last week, said it would take a 30-member delegation to one of the events on the tour.

On Sunday, met by indigenous children in traditional garb and a stiff Andean wind that blew the white skullcap off his head as he emerged from his airplane, Francis arrived here to start a three-nation tour that will take him to some of the poorest and yet most environmentally rich countries of his native continent.