Nearly a million people celebrated here on Friday as Pope Benedict XVI created Brazil's first native-born saint at an open-air mass in a sun-drenched Sao Paulo park.
SAO PAULO: Nearly a million people celebrated here on Friday as Pope Benedict XVI created Brazil's first native-born saint at an open-air mass in a sun-drenched Sao Paulo park.
The crowds filled the Campo de Marte, dominated by a giant wooden cross, and a giant roar went up as the 80-year-old Benedict rode to the altar in his Popemobile for the biggest event in his five-day trip to Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country.
The event echoed a beatification mass celebrated at the same venue by Benedict's charismatic predecessor John Paul II in 1980.
But unlike John Paul II's celebration, which resonated with Brazilian music and dance, Friday's mass canonizing Antonio de Sant'Ana Galvao, a Franciscan monk, followed a sober, classical liturgy.
Still, many Brazilian pilgrims were thrilled at the prospect of having their first native-born saint.
"Brazil is great, Brazil is beautiful and today we have a saint," said 17-year-old Juliane Oliveira de Souza.
Thousands of Brazilian flags waved over the crowd as well as those of many other Latin American countries. Demilson Goncalves, a 32-year-old nurse, said he had been cured of a hernia by Friar Galvao, who lived from 1739 to 1822.
The monk founded monasteries and convents throughout Brazil, but is best known today because of his reputed healing powers delivered in small paper "miracle" pills.
The Church has recognized three miracle cures attributed to the monk, while two are required for sainthood.
In his homily, the conservative Benedict spoke of Galvao's "powerful evangelizing influence".
The German pontiff said Galvao set an example for the modern age "so full of hedonism" in a phrase attributed to the monk: "Take away my life before I offend your blessed Son, my Lord!"
Galvao showed the world that it "needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds. ... It is necessary to oppose those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage," Benedict said to cheers.
The Church hopes that elevating Galvao to sainthood will help reverse major inroads that evangelical faiths have made not only in Brazil, but also across Latin America, which is home to almost half the world's population of 1.1 billion Catholics.
The canonization mass followed on the heels of a rally late Thursday attended by tens of thousands of Latin American young people at a Sao Paulo football stadium where Benedict urged them to "be apostles of youth."
"I send you out ... on the great mission of evangelizing young men and women who have gone astray in this world like sheep without a shepherd," the pontiff said, urging young people to draw their inspiration from "universal moral values."
The former head of the Vatican's top doctrinal body as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reiterated his strict line against abortion and euthanasia with his frequent phrase, "promote life from its beginning to its natural end."
The speech -- coupled with a debate over abortion after Benedict and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva traded public comments on the sensitive subject -- prompted a cartoon in the Sao Paulo daily, Folha de S. Paulo, showing a dour-looking pope carrying an oversized hammer.
Later Friday the pope was to meet around 430 Brazilian bishops in Sao Paulo's Cathedral da Se, after which he will travel to nearby Aparecida to open a conference of Latin American bishops on Sunday, the final day of his trip.
That meeting will be aimed at giving impetus to the church's missionary reach in the region.
Latin America is home to nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, with Brazil the largest stronghold with 155,000. But in recent years the Church has lost ground to rival evangelical faiths, as well as to a growing number of people who have abandoned religion altogether.
In Brazil, 64 per cent of the population is Catholic, but the figure has fallen from 74 per cent a decade ago, according to a recent study. At the same time, the number of evangelical followers has risen to 17 percent from 11 percent, the Datafolha institute said.
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