After a chaotic start then a day's rest in Rio, this third day of Pope Francis' first foreign trip brought the Argentine pontiff to Brazil's patronal shrine of Aparecida – a visit added at his own insistence, both in token of Jorge Bergoglio's intense Marian devotion and to recall one of the key stops on his road to the papacy.
The site of the last decennial plenary of the continent's bishops in 2007 – whose closing manifesto, a call for a "continental mission" of evangelization in the face of a declining number of Catholics and a boom among Evangelicals, was drafted under Bergoglio's watch – some estimates tip Aparecida as the church's most-visited Marian shrine. The latest of several churches on the spot – one able to accommodate a crowd of 45,000 within its walls – the current basilica was dedicated in 1980 by Blessed John Paul II, the founder of World Youth Day who's set to be canonized later this year.
The site of the last decennial plenary of the continent's bishops in 2007 – whose closing manifesto, a call for a "continental mission" of evangelization in the face of a declining number of Catholics and a boom among Evangelicals, was drafted under Bergoglio's watch – some estimates tip Aparecida as the church's most-visited Marian shrine. The latest of several churches on the spot – one able to accommodate a crowd of 45,000 within its walls – the current basilica was dedicated in 1980 by Blessed John Paul II, the founder of World Youth Day who's set to be canonized later this year.
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