{{Hundreds of thousands of people are attending Pope Francis’s inauguration mass in St Peter’s Square.}}<\/p>\n
On Monday, World leaders flew in for the inauguration where Latin America’s first pontiff will receive the formal symbols of papal power.<\/p>\n
The mass laden with rituals and spectacular imagery begins with a tour of the famous Vatican plaza by the Argentine pope after his election last week.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis toured a crammed St. Peter’s Square in an open white jeep on Tuesday to greet a huge crowd gathered for a Mass to inaugurate his papacy, which has already fanned hope for a renewal of the scandal-plagued Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
In another sign of the informality that is already a mark of his papacy, Francis abandoned the bullet-proof popemobile frequently used by his more formal predecessor Benedict, to tour the sprawling square in bright sunshine.<\/p>\n
Crowds had been pouring into the square and surrounding streets since before dawn.<\/p>\n
Francis, who was elected by a secret conclave of cardinals last Wednesday, stopped frequently to greet the crowd and kiss babies held up to him. He got out of the vehicle at one point to bless a disabled man.<\/p>\n
The Mass, which was due to start at 9:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) will formally install Francis as the new leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Hundreds of thousands of people are attending Pope Francis’s inauguration mass in St Peter’s Square.}} On Monday, World leaders flew in for the inauguration where Latin America’s first pontiff will receive the formal symbols of papal power. The mass laden with rituals and spectacular imagery begins with a tour of the famous Vatican plaza by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6621"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6621"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}