Pope Francis lands in a restless Brazil

Frenzied crowds mobbed the car carrying Pope Francis on Monday when he returned to his home continent for the first time as pontiff, embarking on a seven-day visit meant to fan the fervor of the faithful around the globe.

During the pope's first minutes in Brazil, ecstatic believers forced his closed-cabin Fiat to stop several times as they swarmed around during the drive from the airport to an official opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. A few security guards struggled to push the crowd back in scenes that at times looked alarming, reported the Associated Press.

Francis, however, looked calm. He rolled down the window on the back passenger-side of the car where he was sitting, waving to the crowd and touching those who reached inside. At one point, a woman handed the pontiff a dark-haired baby, whom he kissed before handing it back.

After finally making it past crowds and blocked traffic, Francis switched to an open-air popemobile as he continued touring around the city’s main streets waving and smiling to throngs of onlookers. Many in the crowd looked stunned, with some standing still and others sobbing loudly.

Idaclea Rangel, a 73-year-old Catholic, was pressed up against a wall and choking out words through her tears. "I can't travel to Rome, but he came here to make my country better ... and to deepen our faith," she said.

Despite some security concerns, Francis plans to travel around the city in the open-air vehicle, not the bullet-proof car used since a would-be assassin shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981.

"We think everyone will understand that the pope's message is one of solidarity and peaceful coexistence," Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said this week.

Nevertheless, a homemade explosive device was discovered in the bathroom of the parking garage of the Brazilian shrine that Pope Francis will visit this week, the military said Monday.

The military said the device was destroyed after its discovery on Sunday at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida between Rio and São Paulo, which the pope is due to visit on Wednesday.

A São Paulo military police spokesman told AFP that the explosive was "insignificant, of low power" and that it was not in an area that the pope or pilgrims would have gone to.

The explosive was found during a security training session.

Federal and local officials have deployed 22,000 soldiers, police and other security officials to ensure safety during the pontiff's visit.

Shortly after arriving in Rio de Janeiro, Pope Francis met with local dignitaries, including President Dilma Rousseff, at a government palace where he urged young Catholics to "go and make disciples of all nations.”

"I came to meet young people coming from all over the world, drawn to the open arms of Christ the Redeemer," Latin America's first pope said alongside President Rousseff.

"They want to find a refuge in his embrace, close to his heart, to listen again to his clear and powerful appeal: 'Go and make disciples of all nations.'"

The depth of the challenge faced by the Argentina-born pontiff is underscored by the decline in the proportion of Catholics in Brazil as its numbers have been eroded by the growing appeal of evangelical Protestantism and secularism.

Francis plans to celebrate World Youth Day along with more than a million visitors to Rio de Janeiro and nearby sites, as part of the Church's effort to reenergize the country’s Catholics.

Energy has hardly been lacking among young Brazilians in recent months, of course, as hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest corruption and inequality amid the country’s preparations to host soccer’s 2014 World Cup. Heightened discontent over social injustice in Latin America’s largest country could provide powerful resonance to Pope Francis’ message that the Church should prioritize alleviating poverty and human suffering.

The pope also intends to tackle the child-sexual-abuse scandals that have rattled the church and place more emphasis on pastoral work – day-to-day ministry, as opposed to the doctrinaire focus favored by his predecessor, Pope Benedict.

"This new pope is more simple," Amanda Martins, a 21-year-old Catholic attending mass near São Paulo this month, told Reuters. "Maybe his visit can strengthen the Church."

The Church faces deteriorating support in Latin America, long a bedrock of Catholicism. Though still home to more Catholics than any other region, adherence to Catholicism has faded because of growth by protestant faiths and because consumer-focused city-dwellers have eclipsed the rural population.

The percentage of Latin Americans who identify as Catholic fell to 72 percent in 2010 from about 90 percent in 1910, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

"The pope is coming as a pastor," Cardinal Raymundo Damasceno, archbishop of Nossa Senhora de Aparecida, told Reuters. "His message will touch on the problems of the people and seek to shed light on the challenges ahead for the Church and society."

For Brazil's 120 million Catholics, challenges abound.

As a near decade-long economic boom gives way to slower growth, more than one million people hit the streets in June to protest against everything from rising prices to bad government and poor public schools and hospitals.

The biggest demonstrations have subsided, but small protests continue, occasionally turning violent. Late on Wednesday, police clashed with looters and vandals who smashed windows and burned garbage in two upscale Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods. Local authorities are concerned that protest groups may use the media attention prompted by the papal visit to draw attention to their causes, as they did during the recent high-profile pre-World Cup international soccer tournament.

Besides planned protests by feminists, gay-rights groups and others who oppose the church's stance on social issues, authorities fear demonstrators will focus on the $158 million that organizers say the papal visit could cost. Most of that will be paid by participants and sponsors, organizers say, but millions more will be needed from public coffers to ensure security, transportation and readiness.

In addition to a seaside speech in Rio's Copacabana neighborhood and a stroll through a well-known shantytown, Francis is scheduled to travel to the Aparecida shrine and a remote pasture west of Rio, where the final two days of the World Youth Day gathering will be held.

Francis has asked to stay in a room in a church residence similar to that of other priests, not a big suite organizers had prepared.

Still, the event is a major spectacle.

The altar being assembled in Copacabana, a terraced stage with four circular mini-altars and a backdrop of giant screens, dwarfs the stage used by the Rolling Stones and others for major concerts on the same spot in recent years. About 10,000 buses will ferry worshippers to and from the pasture in rural Rio.

"It's a spectacle to show the world that the Church still exists and is very much alive," says Leonardo Boff, a prominent Brazilian theologian and former Catholic priest.

Al Jazeera and wire services