Pope Francis: "Listen To Women, Men Are Too Machista'"

Pope Francis told men at Manila, Phillippines, that men should listen to women, who have "much to tell us." They can ask questions that men cannot understand, he said.

"Women have much to tell us in today's society," Francis told the male audience at the Catholic University of Santo Tomas in Manila, on his last day of a visit to Philippines and Sri Lanka.

The audience clapped thunderously. About 6 million people had come to see him in a world record turnout. "At times we men are too 'machista', the Argentinian pontiff said using the word for the term for extreme male chauvinism in his native Spanish, according to rt.com.

According to the 78-year-old Catholic leader, men do not permit any space for women even though they are capable of seeing everything with a different perspective.

His comments followed the questioning by four out of five people on the stage, who were all men. There are too few women here, he said, to laughter, according to yahoo.com.

He added that a 12-year-old girl asked him the most difficult question. Glyzelle Palomar, who had been living in the streets before she had been adopted by a church charity, wept when she asked her question.

"Many children are abandoned by their parents. Many children get involved in drugs and prostitution. Why does God allow these things to happen to us? The children are not guilty of anything," Palomar said.

For this, Pope Francis hugged her briefly. He said that she was the only one who had put a question for which there was no answer and she wasn't even able to express it in words, but in tears, he said. He appealed that when the next pope came to Manila, there should be more women among the audience.

The Philippines is the country with the maximum number of Catholics in Asia. In a nation of 75.5 million people, 80 percent are Catholics.