World Youth Day 2013: Gathering Ends Sunday With 3 Million Attending Pope Francis’ Final Mass (VIDEOS)

The 15^th international celebration of World Youth Day ended on Sunday with the final Mass celebrated by Pope Francis at the Copacabana Beach of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Confirming the rock star status of the four-month pontiff, the ultimate event drew an even larger crowd of 3 million young people from different nations as well as Brazilians.

The Saturday preaching by Pope Francis drew a crowd of 1 million, which grew threefold on the last day of the WYD.

To indicate the interest of young people in the event, the bulk of the attendees spent about eight hours on the beach in an all-night vigil in a bid to get the best spot for the Mass. The crowd occupied all available spaces on the two-and-a-half long beach.

The numbers of attendees at the last event indicates the growing popularity of Pope Francis, known for his simplicity and reforms he is initiating in the Roman Catholic Church, since the last WYD vigil in Madrid presided in 2011 by then Pope Benedict XVI drew only 1 million pilgrims.

But it is still short of the 5 million who attended the final mass of the WYD presided by the charismatic Pope John Paul II in Manila, Philippines.

In his message, Pope Francis said, "Jesus offers us something bigger than the World Cup," referring to Brazil's hosting of the sport event in 2014.

Even in his homily, Pope Francis pushed for simplicity is sharing the faith, saying, "At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import and intellectualism foreign to our people."

The failure of the Catholic Church to explain its message to Brazil's poor is evident with the growing number of Protestant and Pentecostal groups in the country's slum districts.

"Perhaps the church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas," Pope Francis said.

The energetic 76-year-old pontiff, whose aides are finding it to cope with his speed and energy, is scheduled to fly out of Brazil on Sunday evening.