Catholic Church inaugurates Pope Francis in huge, open-air Mass After waving and smiling from the open back of a popemobile that rolled through a grid of roads among the crowd, Francis, dressed in a white cassock and white skullcap, descended to the tomb of the apostle Peter, inside St. Peter's Basilica. Flanked by cardinals, Peter's 266th successor knelt and bowed his head in prayer, then rose to offer incense. As church choirs chanted the litany of the saints, Francis emerged from the basilica, carrying a gold cross as a staff. He proceeded down a wide nave and behind a double-file line of the church's cardinals, who were clad in golden robes and cream-colored mitres. As the new pope stepped into the bright, sunny day, Argentines in the front row of the crowd waved their sky blue flag. Representatives from 132 nations, including many heads of state, sat opposite 250 red-capped cardinals and purple-clad bishops who had taken their seats atop the basilica stairs. Leaders of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Janist faiths sat together in a section just below the steps. In the crowd, one banner read "Buongiorno Francis," a nod to the new pope's casual style and his initial greeting of "Buonasera" to the faithful from the basilica's balcony on the night of his election. Another banner read, "Go Francis and Fix the Church," reflecting the hope that the Argentine would prove to be a reformer in substance as well as style. Perhaps the most notable sign of the sense of pervasive optimism that is marking the beginning of Francis" pontificate was the presence at the Mass of Bartolomew I, the Istanbul-based leader of the world's Orthodox Christians. He was the first Orthodox Christian patriarch to attend a papal inauguration since the great schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism nearly a millennium ago. Under a crimson canopy on the basilica steps, Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran - who announced Francis to the world with a call of "Habemus Papam" on the balcony of St. Peter's not even a week ago - draped the pontiff's shoulders with the papal pallium. The woolen scarf recalls the sheep Jesus carried on his shoulders, and symbolizes the pope's status as a good shepherd, responsible for a flock of 1.2 billion. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, then fitted Francis's right hand with the gold-plated Fisherman's ring, a symbol of Christ telling the fisherman Peter that he would now be a fisher of souls. Six cardinals representing the different orders of the college then committed their obedience to the pope. In his homily, Francis noted the "significant coincidence" that his inauguration fell on the feast of St. Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, and the name-day of "venerable predecessor" Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict last month became the first pope in 600 years.