Kenyan Churches Celebrate Ahead of Pope's Visit.
FOSTER: Pope Francis left Rome a couple of hours ago for Nairobi, the first stop in his first ever trip to Africa. Pontiff will be addressing the continent's growing Catholic congregation and is expected to try and ease religious tensions between Christians and Muslims there. After Kenya, the pope will go to Uganda, wrapping up his trip in the capital of the Central African Republic. Also, authorities are tightening security measures in preparation for the Kenyan visit. Kenyan Catholic churches are getting ready for the occasion in their own way. Many of the celebrations draw on a mix of local culture and Catholic faith. Robyn Kriel visits one of these vibrant churches.</s>ROBYN KRIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Bishop John Oballa Owaa is perhaps one of the Africa's busiest bishops. Today in one of the post-remote regions of his Kenyan diocese, he will marry nine couples, perform at 65 confirmations and preach for close to five hours to this crowd, many of whom have walked through the night to reach the church. It's a striking mix of cultures from the most modern wedding practices to the most traditional, all with the upcoming journal economy of one very important man in mind.</s>BISHOP JOHN OBALLA OWAA, CATHOLIC BISHOP: Both before the visit of the Holy Father and afterwards, there is quite an increase in the number of people who wish to embrace Catholic faith. The increase of vocations to priesthood, to sisterhoods, to brotherhoods, went to, you know, very high levels.</s>KRIEL: It's the shifting geography of the Vatican, Africa's Catholic population has more than doubled in the last 30 years. It's expected to surpass that of Europe by 2050. Much of this is due to population growth. (on camera): Just take a look at the makeup of this service as an example. There are a few rose of adults, but the majority of the people here are children, hundreds of them. It's these stocked demographics that Pope Francis and the church will need to keep in mind going forward. (voice-over): The church's commitment to reaching this site, a more than two hour drive from the closet town is where another one of Pope Francis' key messages comes into play, urging the church to reach the outer peripheries as a method of evangelization.</s>OWAA: Getting to reach the people and smell, pastors must have the smell of the sheep. They must lead them there. They must reach them. They must access them and they must be accessible.</s>KRIEL: For what this church may lack in accessibility, it surely makes up for in vibrant devotion.</s>FOSTER: Robyn is live in Nairobi for us right now. Robyn, all looks very joyful. I'm sure people are very excited. Huge amount going on behind the scenes to make sure there are no security problems, essentially.</s>KRIEL: Well, yes, Max, this is not a similar visit to say President Barack Obama who visited earlier this year, because there are thousands of U.S. security agents descending on Nairobi. There's a small Vatican security team. It's largely left up to Kenyan security service. They deploy 10,000 police officers, and another few thousand youth service officers who will be keeping the public safe. And we understand that, of course, as always, there are threats, because Kenya and Uganda both have trips fighting al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab just across the border into Somalia. So, we understand there are messages in place to disrupt any possible attacks that might be launched during this visit. However, we are told that they are trying extremely hard. They have a number of different international organizations working with them to try and make sure there are no security incidents and that the pontiff has a peaceful and, indeed, very exciting visit.</s>FOSTER: It looks very exciting, indeed. Robyn, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us from Nairobi. We just got these into CNN in the wake of that downed jet on the Syrian Turkish border, Russia says it is deploying a missile-to-air defense system. Let's go into the Russian defense minister's Twitter account. The system will operate from an airbase we are told within Syria. Up next, testing the old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Amazon is told to scrap Nazi-themed advertisements for its new television show. That's next.