By Mail Foreign Service Pope Francis has completed a historic trip to his home continent by celebrating mass to three million people on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach. The colossal crowds cheered the first Latin American pope in a remarkable response to his message that the Catholic Church must shake itself up and get out into the streets to find the faithful. Nuns mixed with bikini-clad young women as nearly the entire 2.5-mile crescent of Copacabana’s broad beach in Rio overflowed with people, some of them taking an early morning dip in the Atlantic and others tossing flags and football shirts into the pontiff’s open-sided car as he drove by.
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Pilgrims cheer the Pope's call for them to get out in the streets to build up the Catholic church
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'Jesus offers us something bigger than the World Cup!' he says, drawing applause from football-mad Brazilians
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Many had spent all night on Copacabana beach in a vigil for World Youth Day
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Presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Suriname were all present for the Mass
Incredible sight: A man reaches out of the window of a glass-fronted hotel to take a photo of the millions of Catholics gathered to see Pope Francis's final mass of trip to @placeholder