Pope Francis Thrills Crowd Ahead Of Installation

Pope Francis thrilled tens of thousands of people on Tuesday gathered for his installation Mass, taking a long round-about through St. Peter's Square and getting out of his jeep to bless a disabled man — a gesture from a man whose papacy is becoming defined by concern for the disadvantaged.
The blue and white flags from Francis' native Argentina fluttered above the crowd that included princes, sheiks, rabbis and presidents. Civil protection crews closed the main streets leading to the square to traffic and set up barricades for nearly a mile (two kilometers) along the route to try to control the masses and allow official delegations through.
Italian media estimated some 1 million might attend, but the numbers at the start of the Mass appeared to be fewer.
For nearly a half-hour, Francis toured the square in an open-air jeep, waving, shouting "Ciao!" to well-wishers and occasionally kissing babies handed up to him as if he had been doing this for years. At one point, as he neared a group of people in wheelchairs, he signaled for the jeep to stop, hopped off, and went to bless a man held up to the barricade by an aide.
"As an Argentine, he was our cardinal. It's a great joy for us," said Edoardo Fernandez Mendia, from the Argentine Pampas who was in the crowd. Recalling another great moment in Argentine history, when soccer great Diego Maradona scored an improbable goal in the 1986 World Cup, he said: "And for the second time, the Hand of God came to Argentina."