VATICAN CITY Pope Francis put his humility on display during his first day as pontiff Thursday, stopping by his hotel to pick up his luggage and pay the bill himself in a decidedly different style of papacy than his tradition-minded predecessor who tended to stay ensconced in the frescoed halls of the Vatican.
The break from Benedict XVI's pontificate was evident even in Francis' wardrobe choices: He kept the simple iron pectoral cross of his days as bishop and eschewed the red cape that Benedict wore when he was presented to the world for the first time in 2005 - choosing instead the simple white cassock of the papacy.
And in his first Mass as pope, Francis showed how different he would be as a pastor, giving an off-the-cuff homily about the need to walk with God, build up his church and confess - at one point referring to children building sand castles on the beach.
It was a far simpler message than the dense, three-page discourse Benedict delivered in Latin during his first Mass as pope in 2005.
The difference in style was a sign of Francis' belief that the Catholic Church needs to be at one with the people it serves and not impose its message on a society that often doesn't want to hear it, Francis' authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press.
"It seems to me for now what is certain is it's a great change of style, which for us isn't a small thing," Rubin said, recalling how the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio would celebrate Masses with homeless people and prostitutes in Buenos Aires.
"He believes the church has to go to the streets," he said, "to express this closeness of the church and this accompaniment with those who are suffering."
Francis spoke by phone with Benedict on Wednesday, soon after he was elected. The visit to Castel Gandolfo will be significant because Benedict's resignation has raised concerns about potential power conflicts emerging from the peculiar situation of having a reigning pope and a retired one.
Francis began his first day as pope making an early morning visit in a simple Vatican car to a Roman basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary and prayed before an icon of the Madonna.
The former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, entered the St. Mary Major basilica through a side entrance just after 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and left about 30 minutes later. He had told a crowd of some 100,000 people packed in rain-soaked St. Peter's Square just after his election that he intended to pray Friday to the Madonna "that she may watch over all of Rome."
The Vatican said Thursday that Francis would visit his predecessor, the now-Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, in the coming days, but "not tomorrow or the
next day."
Francis was expected to give a private Mass with his cardinals in the Sistine Chapel at 5 p.m., Rome time, on Thursday (12 p.m. eastern). On Friday morning, he is to welcome and address the cardinals in the Vatican's Clementine Hall.
The new pope's official inauguration as Bishop of Rome will take place in St. Peter's Square on Saturday.
One of the largest questions looming on the minds of Vatican watchers on Thursday morning, is who Francis will pick as his Secretary of State -- the number two position at the Vatican. The position was held under Benedict by the powerful Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Bertone was considered a staunch traditionalist member of the Curia; a defender of the Church's secretive Rome-based bureaucracy and a man who impeded reform.
Francis' own background is not that of a Vatican insider, but rather a member of the Jesuit order -- a fiercely independent branch of the Church devoted to running teaching institutions and social programs, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. Yet, until now, Pope Francis' conservative views on birth control, homosexuality and women's role in the Church have not made him popular with his relatively progressive Jesuit brothers. He's no great friend to the Curia, says Phillips.
Wednesday evening, at 7:06 p.m. in Rome, white smoke billowed from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel -- the first indication that 114 cardinals had elected Francis to lead the 1.2 million-strong church in an unusually quick conclave.
Francis, the first Jesuit pope, first pope from the Americas, and first non-European since the Middle Ages, decided to call himself Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, the humble friar who dedicated his life to helping the poor.
Pope Francis appears on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, March 13, 2013 in Vatican City.
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The new pope immediately charmed the crowd in St. Peter's that roared when his name was announced.
Waving shyly, he told said the cardinals' job was to find a bishop of Rome. "It seems as if my brother cardinals went to find him from the end of the earth, but here we are. Thank you for the welcome."
The 76-year-old Bergoglio, said to have finished second when Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, was chosen on just the fifth ballot to replace the first pontiff to resign in 600 years. In the past century, only Benedict, John Paul I in 1978 and Pius XII in 1939 were elected faster.
Benedict's longtime aide, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, accompanied Francis on the visit at St. Mary Major, the ANSA news agency reported. In addition to being Benedict's secretary, Gaenswein is also the prefect of the papal household and will be arranging the new pope's schedule.
Also praying with the new pope on Thursday was the archpriest emeritus of the basilica, Cardinal Bernard Law. The ex-Archbishop of Boston was forced to resign that position in 2002 after leaked internal Church documents showed he had tried to shield pedophile priests in his diocese from outside persecution. Law moved to Rome after his resignation and was made archpriest of the St. Mary Major basilica in 2004 by Pope John Paul II, a position he held until 2011.
Francis' election elated Latin Americans, who number 40 percent of the world's Catholics but have long been underrepresented in the church leadership. On Wednesday, drivers honked their horns in the streets of Buenos Aires and television announcers screamed with elation at the news.
"It's a huge gift for all of Latin America. We waited 20 centuries. It was worth the wait," said Jose Antonio Cruz, a Franciscan friar at the St. Francis of Assisi church in the colonial Old San Juan district in Puerto Rico. "Everyone from Canada down to Patagonia is going to feel blessed."
The new pontiff brings a common touch. The son of middle-class Italian immigrants, he denied himself the luxuries that previous cardinals in Buenos Aires enjoyed. He lived in a simple apartment, often rode the bus to work, cooked his own meals and regularly visited slums that ring Argentina's capital.
He considers social outreach, rather than doctrinal battles, to be the essential business of the church.
"As a champion of the poor and the most vulnerable among us, he carries forth the message of love and compassion that has inspired the world for more than 2,000 years that in each other, we see the face of God," President Barack Obama said in a statement.
As the 266th pope, Francis inherits a Catholic church in turmoil, beset by the clerical sex abuse scandal, internal divisions and dwindling numbers in parts of the world where Christianity had been strong for centuries.
While Latin America still boasts the largest bloc of Catholics on a single continent, it has faced competition from aggressive evangelical churches that have chipped away at strongholds like Brazil, where the number of Catholics has dropped from 74 percent of the population in 2000 to 65 percent today.
Francis is sure to bring the church closer to the poverty-wracked region, while also introducing the world to a very different type of pope, whose first words were a simple, "Brothers and sisters, good evening."
He asked for prayers for himself, and for Benedict, whose stunning resignation paved the way for his election.
"I want you to bless me," Francis said in his first appearance from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, asking the faithful to bow their heads in silent prayer.
didn't they have any younger candidates say in their 50s or early 60s? here is just another old geezer of 76 y/o who is elected pope, just another Italian born in Argentina of Italian parents. will he defrock all sex offenders, pedophiles among the catholic clergy? will he see to it that those same defrocked clergy persons are criminally prosecuted? doubt, he will do anything but sweep the catholic criminals under the carpet, hide them here and there, transfer them. same old same old. catholic congregations continue to tithe to a corrupt catholic church organization.
The so-called Jesuit blood oath has been recognized as a fraud from day one and it is very telling that people like this goof "GORGOR" has to resort to something so low and mythical as that in order to attack our new pope. There never was an oath like that and never will there be except in the minds of lowlifes like this so-called "GORGOR". Stupid screen name too.
So on his first day, he goes to "pray" with a man who was actually forced to resign for intentionally hiding the names and actions of pedophile priests.
Yeah, I know. Jesus ate dinner with despised tax collectors and hung around with a reformed prostitute, but did anybody hear Bernard Law come out of the basilica saying, "I understand what I did was wrong, I repent, and will immediately turn over the secret files"?
Catholic children everywhere still need to be very afraid.
According to many recent reports from the U.S. Government, Hispanics will become the Majority Ethnic Groups in the entire United States of America around the year 2032. Almost all Hispanics are Roman Catholics. Soon, the Pope will have Significant Political Power in America.
On the very day, the Muslims of Pakistan attacked 1,000s of Christians and burned down 100s of their homes. What an outrage. Where are the protests of such actions ? by anyone ?
This is daily event around the Islamic world ( please see Jihad Watch.com or Atlas Shrugged for daily updates of literally daily atrocities against Christians and Jews by Muslims).
It would be very nice to have a strong voice in the Pope, telling the Savages to stop it, and to back off. Ditto for our President. Let us pray.
Well, let's see. He's from South America... I wonder if he will arrange to return the thousands of tons of gold handed over as patronage treasure to the Vatican during the conquest and genocide of the New World, condoned and encouraged by The Church as a way to subdue the brown races and bring them to Christianity... All manner of treasure was stolen from indigenous peoples. And those who weren't massacred were enslaved in the mines and other enterprises to produce more wealth and treasure for their conquerors and for export to Rome for its continued endorsement of their right to plunder and to sanction their ruling power. When The Church takes a homeless person, non-cleric, who has spent their life in struggle and pain without playing the power games of The Church... A truly "humble person" from the streets of an underdeveloped nation, and elevates him or her to the papacy... that will be news.
That you are from the streets of an underdeveloped nation does not make you a humble person. Just like coming from USA does not make you literate or even educated.
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Ok Legal we can talk about it. I may be open!!! LOL. It sure beats being like Slow and sitting in his nursing home.
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I'm not sure I am going.
I may, I may not.
I'm talking 'round here (not over there).
Probably won't be a lot of powder, and the base will be thinner than fatter in most spots, and likely fairly hard.
Book your flight now...like, immediately. I was invited up to go, just three days from now.
Are you "game"? LOL!
Any time after Sunday at sunrise.
I'll perhaps already be there, but in any event, won't be later than 8 am that day.
You guys chased him away!
:D
Only to discover you have no friends there, either.
Poor Dan can't win for losin'
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She is a centered independent, actually.
She's only liberal in some social sense.
And believe me, when it comes to alcohol, she's probably far less liberal than hypocrite.
That is my sense as to her and with that, anyway.
As for drinking, she's likely not, these days, a big drinker if she ever was before, I wouldn't think.
Hell, I can imagine there are people her age who really ARE "big drinkers" and are no less intelligent, overall.
For me, it is the intellect that is a turn on, but for Dan...well, I think he's turned on in other ways.
I do not now, nor did I at any point before, pretend to know what those ways are, though.
1. Is this, "The Jesuit Oath of Blood", for real?
2. and/or was it really sanctioned by Vatican or Papal Orders?
3. What, When and Where specifically, is the original source of such horrible oath?
4. Who has interpreted and twisted this devilish oath into what must dupe the 'believers' into accepting it as GOD-ORDERED?
5. In which Century(ies) was such hellish oath put into effect?
As God Herself would see it, religion perverts and ruins everything!
Yeah, I know. Jesus ate dinner with despised tax collectors and hung around with a reformed prostitute, but did anybody hear Bernard Law come out of the basilica saying, "I understand what I did was wrong, I repent, and will immediately turn over the secret files"?
Catholic children everywhere still need to be very afraid.
According to many recent reports from the U.S. Government, Hispanics will become the Majority Ethnic Groups in the entire United States of America around the year 2032. Almost all Hispanics are Roman Catholics. Soon, the Pope will have Significant Political Power in America.
Non-Catholics in America will be very afraid.
This is daily event around the Islamic world ( please see Jihad Watch.com or Atlas Shrugged for daily updates of literally daily atrocities against Christians and Jews by Muslims).
It would be very nice to have a strong voice in the Pope, telling the Savages to stop it, and to back off. Ditto for our President. Let us pray.
ANS: NOT ENOUGH.