Flag-waving schoolchildren and the president of Brazil gave Pope John Paul II a warm welcome yesterday as he began a family-focused visit tightly guarded by a 23,000-strong security staff. "It is with great honour and joy. . .that I wish to welcome you in the name of the Brazilian people," President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said to the pontiff at Rio's Galeao International Airport, as schoolchildren waved banners in the yellow and white of the Vatican.
On this his third visit to Brazil, and 15th to Latin America, the 77-year-old pope is to highlight his four-day stay with a celebration of family life in the huge Maracana football stadium on Saturday.
But wasting no time on arrival, the pope immediately spoke out in favor of the rights of Brazil's indigenous communities and of its blacks.
"Indigenous peoples descended from the first inhabitants of this land . . . deserve full care so that they might live their culture in dignity," the pontiff said.
The pope, who will lead a world congress on the family, said Brazil's indigenous people had "contributed, with their culture, to injecting into Brazilian culture a deep sense of family, of respect for forebears, of closeness and affection".
The pope looked tired but otherwise in reasonable health on the plane to Brazil.