Pope Francis cuts short his visit to Tacloban due to approaching tropical storm Mekkhala

#PopeFrancis #Tacloban #Haiyan #Philipines Pope Francis is currently on a visit to the Philippines but was forced to cut short his visit to Tacloban because of the approaching storm Mekkhala – the city of Tacloban had been devastated by typhoon Haiyan and over 7350 people perished in that storm.
Pope Francis had celebrated mass with survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban on Saturday morning. The storm that happened 14-months back was believed to have been the most powerful storm ever recorded on land and the worst natural disaster of the Philippines.
He had come on a five-day visit to the Philippines and, even though his visit to Tacloban was cut short because of the approaching Tropical Storm Mekkhala, he made use of his first major speech to call on authorities in the Philippines to resist corruption and end "scandalous social inequalities". Incidentally, Catholics make up nearly 80% of the country's population.
He is scheduled to conduct a mass on Sunday in Manila and the organizers expect up to six million people to attend it in a Manila park. It the crowd does reach that figure, it would pass the previous record for a papal ceremony of 1995 – at that time, nearly five million attended the mass by John Paul II.