GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador --Pope Francis on Monday gave the first Mass of his Latin American tour before hundreds of thousands of faithful who waited for hours under a broiling sun in a large dirt field in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city.

Wearing richly decorated vestments made by local nuns, he gave a 17-minute sermon in which he stressed the theme of the family.

“In the heart of the family, no one is rejected,” he said. “Everyone is worth the same.”

Before the Mass began, Francis rode through the city in a white car and then onto the dirt field in a popemobile. He was engulfed by people, on the streets watching his procession and then in the field. Throngs of people were lined for miles as his procession passed.

Following the sermon, volunteers spread out among the crowd to give communion to many of the congregants.

For the great majority of the faithful in the open field, Francis was a tiny speck, if he was visible at all, and the stage from which he spoke a distant mirage in the heat. But they could watch him on large television screens mounted around the park.

Many people brought plastic stools to sit on and umbrellas to ward off the sun. Vendors circulated among them, selling food and souvenirs.

Many arrived before dawn, and people continued pouring into the park throughout the morning, often arriving in extended families, with grandparents, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, the littlest ones often carried on a parent’s shoulders.

In places, the scene had a carnival atmosphere. Vendors hawked popcorn, fruit salad, hot dogs fried in bread and other local delicacies. Others sold souvenirs, nearly all emblazoned with a photo of Francis: key rings, coffee mugs, crosses, flags, T-shirts, headbands.

At times it felt like a Latin American political rally, with bands playing upbeat pope-themed songs from the main stage to warm up the crowd before his arrival.

Francis began his visit to his home continent on Monday morning, meeting children and people with disabilities at a local sanctuary. After the Mass, he was expected to have lunch with an old friend, a 91-year-old priest at a Jesuit school where he once sent interns.

This was the first opportunity for Francis, who arrived on Sunday, to begin shaping the message of his trip. Less than a month ago, the pope released a blistering critique of capitalism in an encyclical about environmental degradation and climate change. He is now visiting a country where the president, Rafael Correa, has been criticized for vowing to open protected areas of the Amazon for oil exploration.

After his visit to Guayaquil, Francis is scheduled to return to Quito, Ecuador, for a private meeting with Mr. Correa. The president has also been the subject of strong protests for proposing to raise taxes, and has been accused of wrapping himself in Francis’ popularity, placing billboards all over the capital. Opponents have also used the Francis visit to stage protests against Mr. Correa.

On Sunday, met by indigenous children in traditional garb and a stiff Andean wind that blew the white skullcap off his head as he emerged from his airplane, Francis arrived here to start a three-nation tour that will take him to some of the poorest and yet most environmentally rich countries of his native continent.

“I give thanks to God for having allowed me to return to Latin America,” he said after being greeted on the tarmac with a hug by Mr. Correa.

Francis later drove through the streets of Quito, the capital, standing in the back of a white car with open sides. Thousands of enthusiastic followers packed the route, throwing flower petals, locally made Panama hats and other items at him. At one point a person ran up to the car and held up a small child dressed in white, and the pope reached out to touch the child on the head.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, estimated the crowd at 500,000.

Francis brings his message of a church in transformation to a region that contains nearly four out of 10 of the world’s Roman Catholics, but that has seen many faithful leave in recent years to join Protestant denominations or abandon organized religion altogether.

“My heart is beating faster and faster,” said Filiberto Rojas, 38, a Colombian businessman who flew to Quito on Saturday and set up a small tent outside the park where Francis is to preside over a huge open-air Mass on Tuesday. The faithful will not be allowed into the park until Monday afternoon, but Mr. Rojas said the wait was worth it: “We haven’t had a pope like this in a long time, a humble pope, a pope of the poor, a pope of the people.”

Francis comes to Ecuador shortly after releasing the landmark encyclical on the environment. In it he exhorted the world to take prompt action to halt potentially catastrophic climate change and ecological degradation, which he warned were partly caused by unchecked economic development and a culture of consumerism.

He is expected to return to those themes in Ecuador, a country of great biological and environmental diversity, with the Amazon rain forest, the Andes Mountains and the Galápagos Islands. It is also a place that is highly sensitive to the conflicts between economic growth and environmental protection.

Mr. Correa has vowed to open a previously protected section of remote Amazon jungle to oil exploration, over the fierce objections of environmentalists, and indigenous groups have protested that the government has failed to take into account their objections to that and other projects.

Francis, 78, has planned a large open-air Mass on Monday in Guayaquil, and then one in Quito the next day. He will travel to Bolivia on Wednesday and from there to Paraguay. The three nations are among the smallest and poorest countries on the continent.

Francis, who was born in Argentina, visited Brazil in 2013 shortly after becoming pope. This is his first visit to Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America since he became pope. (Source: The New York Times)

Story Date: July 7, 2015