1.   At the end of the parade the pontiff traveled to Our Daily Bread, a downtown soup kitchen operated by Catholic Charities.

2.   Still more people lined the streets that the pontiff would travel on his way to the airport.

3.   After Esquipulas, the pontiff travels to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Venezuela.

4.   The globe-trotting pontiff had not traveled outside of Rome since January, when he spent a day of prayer in the central hilltown of Assisi.

5.   The pontiff will then travel to Syria and Malta.

6.   Cuba is the only country in predominantly Catholic Latin America to which the pontiff has not traveled during his papacy.

7.   Earlier, the pontiff had traveled Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, where evangelical Protestant missionaries are winning converts at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church.

8.   Security here appeared more relaxed than in Manila, where the pontiff travelled in an armoured vehicle and anyone approaching him was thoroughly searched.