Pope Francis encouraged the Mauritian people to support “a better division of income and the integral promotion of the poor” and “not to yield to the temptation of an idolatrous economic model that sacrifices human lives on the altar of speculation and profit alone.”

“Our young people are our foremost mission! We must invite them to find their happiness in Jesus,” the pope said at Mass for 368,000 Catholics.

Father Opeka welcomed Pope Francis to Akamasoa which, he said, “was one a zone of exclusion, suffering violence and death” but over the past 30 years “Divine Providence has created an ‘oasis of hope’ in which children have regained their dignity, young people have returned to work and their parents have begun to work to prepare a future for their children.”

On Sunday, Sept. 8, his last day in Madagascar, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for approximately one million people. The overwhelming majority of those present at Mass are poor, but they love Francis because they see him as “a man of God” and “the pope of the poor,” one who is on their side in world where they have so little.

Pope Francis encouraged the bishops of Madagascar “to be sowers of hope and peace” in the midst of the contradictions that are so evident in this land.

On his first day in Madagascar, Pope Francis issued a strong call to the governmental authorities of this island of 27 million people to fight “with determination” against “endemic forms of corruption and speculation,” to “confront” the situations that “create conditions of inhumane poverty,” and to protect the environment against damage to nature and the people.

Before leaving the country on Sept. 6, Francis made a last, passionate appeal for reconciliation and the healing of wounds from the nation's long civil war.

During his sojourn in Madagascar on Sept. 8, Pope Francis will drive six miles from the center of Antananarivo, the capital city of this country of 27 million people, to visit the cooperative association Akamasoa.

He praised “the efforts made in recent decades to ensure that peace is once more the norm and reconciliation the best path to confront the difficulties and challenges that you face as a nation.”

Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni told journalists that “in an informal context, the pope wished to say that he always considers criticisms as an honor, particularly when they come from authoritative thinkers, and in this case from an important nation.”