Report from 'Rio'....

(Vatican Radio) Sean- Patrick Lovett is currently in Brazil awaiting the arrival of Pope Francis, due to arrive there on Monday 22nd of July for a week long visit planned to coincide with the XXVIII World Youth Day. He filed this report from 'Rio ' :

What can I tell you about Rio that you don’t already know? Or that you don’t already think you know? Well, let me begin by telIing you what I myself didn’t know until I arrived here just a few hours ago.
For example that, when the first European explorers anchored their boats in Copacabana Bay in 1502, they named the place “Rio do Janeiro” because they thought it was a river (Rio), and because January (Janeiro) was the month they arrived. They must have been enchanted by what they saw: white sandy beaches alternating with lush vegetation and romantic stretches of water insinuating themselves among cloud-shrouded mountains. Add to the above description a helter-skelter of high-rise buildings flanked by sprawling make-shift houses and shelters – and you have an updated version of what the modern-day explorer sees. At first glance, Rio looks like a city-in-the-making: chaotic, neurotic, exotic. Copacabana is one of the most densely-populated pieces of real estate in the world – with over 25,000 people per square meter. And over 20% of Rio’s population of roughly 6 million live in the favelas that extend above and beyond the beaches as far as the eye can see.
Perhaps because it was Brazil’s capital until 1960 (when the capital was moved to Brasilia), the city still has a powerful cultural and historical feel to it: an intriguing blend of “something old and something new”. Like most Latin American cities, it’s also a study in contradictions: some of the richest (more millionaires per square metre than anywhere else in the world) and the poorest live here. Multi-million dollar apartment blocks overlook squalid shacks – and both are paternally observed from above by the towering statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado.
So why was Rio chosen to host the 28^th World Youth Day? Perhaps precisely because of these blends and contradictions. The city is home to people from all over the world, many of them descendants of those who came from Europe, Africa and all over Latin America. Rio is a multinational, multicultural metropolis that hums with youthful energy and pulses with a vitality which is currently at its height.
And it’s only just begun.
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