Pope Francis is set to celebrate mass in the Philippine capital of Manila on Sunday, and the crowds are expected to be record-breaking. Devotees began gathering before dawn, some even camping outside the gates of Rizal Park before they opened at 6 a.m. local time. A nonstop stream of people was seen walking towards the park on Sunday morning, with some stopping to take strategic positions along the Pope's intended route.

Officials expect 6 million faithful to attend the mass, breaking a record set in the very same venue by John Paul II in 1995.

Before the celebration got under way, Pope Francis met with Filipino youth at the University of Santo Tomas. He opened the meeting on a somber note, asking the thousands gathered there to pray with him for a woman who died on Saturday during his visit to the typhoon-battered city of Tacloban. The woman, identified by police as Kristel Padasas, was a volunteer on the event organizing committee for the Pope and was killed when high storm winds knocked down some scaffolding.

"She was 27 years old, young like yourselves," the Pope said, "She was an only daughter."

'Long live the Pope!'

The mass in Manila will cap off Francis's week-long South Asia tour, which saw him first in Sri Lanka before a four day trip to the Philippines, the region's most strongly Catholic country, where he has received a superstar reception.

The trip to the Philippines has however been marred by the bad weather which killed Padasas, forcing the Pope to cut short his trip to meet survivors of last year's Typhoon Haiyan, which left 7,300 dead or missing.

Despite the driving rain, 200,000 people from Tacloban and the surrounding area came out to see Francis , chanting "Long live the pope!" But the fierce tropical storm forced the Pope to cut the visit short, for which he said he was "truly saddened" after he gave a truncated but highly emotional sermon to the survivors of one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit the Philippines.

"When I saw…that catastrophe, I felt I had to be here," the pontiff told the faithful. He said it was then he decided that he must make an official visit to the Philippines.

The former Spanish colony is 80 percent Catholic, and often seen as the Church's benchmark in Asia. Francis's trip is the fifth papal visit to the Philippines and his second to Asia, which is a region of growing importance for the Church as it faces declining support in Europe and the United States.

es/bw (AP, AFP)