It houses a painting of the Virgin Mary that was said to shed tears in 1906.
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Earlier in the visit, the Pope urged Ecuadorians to balance the need to increase the nation’s wealth with the need to protect the environment.
The pope flies on Wednesday to La Paz, Bolivia, another highland city where oxygen tanks are kept at the airport for arriving passengers who may struggle with the thin air.
His words in Ecuador were a foretaste of his September trip to the United States, where most of the criticism of the encyclical has come.
The country earns around one-half of its foreign income from oil, yet is also one of the world’s most biodiverse nations, with more endangered species than anywhere else. The song was specially composed for the pope.
He challenged universities to ensure that students’ educations aren’t aimed only at profitable careers but at helping the poor and the environment.
He then went out on the steps to address a crowd, but instead of giving the short speech that he had prepared, Francis offered a brief blessing for the “noble Ecuadorean people“.
In his homily, Francis praised families as the nucleus of society, calling them “the nearest hospital, the first school for the young, the best home for the elderly”. The crowd is going wild. SERENADEDProtest leaders have called a moratorium during the pope’s visit, and Francis used his arrival speech on Sunday to call for dialogue and respect for differences.
The head of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, Jorge Herrera, says Roman Catholic Church officials never responded clearly to the group’s request to meet directly with Francis during his three days in the country.
“It seems we’re not being permitted a direct voice”, he said late Monday.
Francis is likely to repeat his message in Bolivia, South America’s poorest country.
“We can no longer turn our backs on reality, on our brothers and sisters, on mother earth”, he declared at a talk on Tuesday at the Pontifical Catholic University in Ecuador’s capital Quito, Spanish news agency Efe reported.
“The tapping of natural resources, which are so abundant in Ecuador, must not be concerned with short-term benefits”, he said. “Our people are hungry for God”.
The Pope told the delegation that his reason for coming to Ecuador was to be “a witness of God’s mercy and of faith in Jesus Christ”.
“Proselytism is a caricature of evangelization”.
While the drop-off in Spanish-speaking Latin America has not been as sharp as it has been in Brazil, it is notable.
Containing both the Galapagos Islands and Amazon rainforest, Ecuador has more biodiversity than any other country on earth.
Pope Francis has called on people across Latin America to use the gospel “to unite our hopes, concerns, ideals and even utopian visions”.
“That cry for liberty… did not lack conviction or force, but history tells us that it was only convincing when personalism, the desire for single leaderships, were put aside”, Francis said.
The Mass featured readings in Quichua, the native language mostly spoken in Ecuador, and Ecuadorean vestments for the pope. Francis will be celebrating the second Mass of his South American tour.
He has just returned from the coastal city of Guayaquil, where he said Mass for 800,000 people. Local media reported that 20 people suffered hypothermia from spending the night outdoors.
Two hydrosuction trucks worked to remove puddles from several inundated sections of the park, Rivera said.
A 59-year-old seafood vendor, Abel Gualoto, rubbed his cold hands and said he didn’t mind the discomfort.
From there Pope Francis moves onto the imposing church and monastery of St Francis, the oldest religious building in the whole of Latin America.
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Pope Francis has a whirlwind final full day in Ecuador on Tuesday, with an open-air Mass in the capital sandwiched between meetings with bishops, indigenous groups and students and capped by a visit to a famed Jesuit church.
