Francis, an Argentine elected Pope following Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in March, is on a weeklong trip to Brazil.

He blessed the flags during a ceremony in Palacio da Cidade attended by Carlos Nuzman, President of Rio 2016, and Eduardo Paes, the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro. 


Francis then headed to Varginha, one of Rio's favela slums and addressed an estimated crowd of more than one million young Roman Catholics on Copacabana beach.

By visiting a favela, Francis was following in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, who visited two during a 1980 trip to Brazil, and Mother Teresa who visited Varginha itself in 1972.


Security was tight.

In addition to the helicopters which hovered overheard, snipers perched atop nearby buildings, metal barricades held the ecstatic crowd at bay on the street and a police officer was posted every two metres apart in the slum.

Varginha is a so-called "pacified" slum - police invaded it in January and pushed out a heavily armed drug gang known as the Red Command, then set up a permanent police post in the slum that had seen virtually no Government presence for decades.

The pacification program started in 2008 as an effort to secure Rio de Janeiro before it hosts the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics.

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