"I expect a messy World Youth Day. But I want things messy and stirred up in the congregations, I want you to take to the streets. I want the Church to take to the streets," Pope Francis told the crowd on Thursday in Rio.
Pope Francis blessed a new altar at a tiny church and hugged and kissed locals who crowded the Varginha community streets.
Security was tight in the shanty town, which is part of the larger favela, one of the many hillside shanty towns which surround Rio.
The Pope, who has called for a "Church of the poor" and who regularly visited some of the poorest areas of that city, specifically asked for a favela to be included in his schedule.
At a Mass at the shrine of Aparecida, he warned tens of thousands of faithful against the "passing idols" of money, power and pleasure.
"How many dealers of death there are that follow the logic of power and money at any cost," Pope Francis told the congregation.
