MAPUTO, Mozambique — Young men and women wearing the words “Pope Francis” on their backs and “Catholic Youth” on their sleeves packed the bleachers of a stadium in Mozambique on Thursday and listened to Francis tell them, “You are important!”

“You need to believe it,” Francis said to the raucous crowd at the Maxaquene Pavilion, in the capital, Maputo, where young Africans regaled him with songs and skits. “Not only are you the future of Mozambique, or of the church and of humanity. You are their present!”

In the stands, Francisco Alfeu Chixango, 23, nodded and said that just seeing Francis would give the entire African church a shot in the arm.

“The pope being here,” he said, “will help the church to grow.”

The continent has already become the globe’s most fertile ground for the faithful and priests who are disappearing from Catholicism’s historic centers in Europe. The Roman Catholic Church continues to expand in Africa, even as it faces competition from increasingly popular Pentecostal and evangelical movements.