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Organisers had warned him to cancel the 2015 open air mass in Tacloban as the weather had worsened.

It unofficially exceeded the four-million strong crowd at John Paul II's Luneta mass in 1995, officially recognised by the Guinness World records as the world's largest papal gathering.

But Francis was not be put off: he flew through the typhoon from the capital Manila to hold the mass in memory of more than 6,000 people who had perished in Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

But with his mass in Tacloban - along with his informal, down-to-earth manner and calls for justice - Pope Francis won particular affection among the Philippine's 80 million Catholics.

When celebrating Mass in Phoenix Park during the same visit, he listed a litany of different types of abuse and mistreatment inflicted on Irish people by Church figures, and the cover-ups of sex crimes.