Pope Francis is preparing to travel to Brazil for the upcoming World Youth Day celebrations from July 22 to 29.

The gathering, which often draws hundreds of thousands of participants, is held every other year in a different part of the world and serves as a kind of pep rally to energise the youngest members of the Catholic Church.

The Pope’s participation starts on the evening of July 25 in Rio’s famed Copacabana Beach area and culminates with a huge, open-air Mass in the Guaratiba area of the city on July 28.

The official welcoming ceremony with President Dilma Rousseff will not be held at the airport, but at the Guanabara palace out in the city.

The Pope will also travel by helicopter to the Nuestra Señora de Aparecida shrine, which is about 120 miles from Rio. There he will celebrate Mass and have lunch with a group of young seminarians.

The room where Pope Francis will stay at the Sumare House in Rio – where Blessed John Paul II also stayed in October 1997 – has a simple bed, a night stand with a telephone, and a small desk. A crucifix hangs on the wall over the bed.

The room reflects the simplicity and humility that has characterised his pontificate and his prior ministry as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

While archbishop, Cardinal Bergoglio lived in a small apartment in Buenos Aires rather than the archbishop’s residence.

He rode the bus and the metro and cooked his own food. Even as Bishop of Rome, he has elected not to live in the papal apart-ments, but rather in the Casa Sancta Marta, the Vatican’s guesthouse.