Pope Francis spent his first day as pontiff paying his hotel bill and catching the bus.
Much has been made of the 76-year-old’s humility and modesty, previously winning praise for eschewing the trappings of office for a frugal life in Buenos Aires, where he was archbishop.
Yesterday the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio began as he means to go on.
Before celebrating mass at the Sistine Chapel he enjoyed an unannounced early morning visit to a Roman basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary and prayed before a Byzantine icon of the Madonna and infant Jesus.
He then crossed the road to greet schoolchildren and commuters travelling to work.
Later, the railway worker’s son stopped by a Vatican-owned priests’ residence in Piazza Navona to collect his luggage.
Pope Francis was driven in an unremarkable car, not the papal limousine, and asked if he needed to pay the bill.
In the hours after his election he shunned the special sedan that was to ferry him to meet the cardinals.
Instead, he chose to travel on a minibus with the cardinals.
When he arrived he refused an elevated platform that he was supposed to meet them from, US Cardinal Timothy Dolan said.
Experts said Pope Francis was deemed the right man for the job because of his ability to unite modernising and conservative elements of the church.
Yesterday, a revealing insight was provided into what Pope Francis may believe about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands whose residents last week voted overwhelmingly to stay British.
The Rt Rev David Leake, a former Anglican Bishop of Argentina, got to know Jorge Bergoglio, as he was then known, when he served between 1990 and 2002.
Mr Leake, who now lives in Norfolk and last saw him in 2002, described him as a “humble man” and said he and the Pope regarded the Falkland Islands as Las Malvinas.
“It is not something we talked about often, but we were both Argentine born and throughout our education it was ingrained in us that the islands are Argentinian,” he said.
“That belief will persist for both of us to this day, although we may believe there are better diplomatic means which could be pursued.”
As the 266th pope and the first to come from Latin America, Pope Francis is now tasked with reviving Catholicism in a time of growing secularism.
He also needs to steer the church away from turmoil.
It has been beset by the clerical sex abuse scandal, internal divisions and dwindling membership in parts of the world where Christianity had been strong for centuries.
He is expected to be officially installed on Tuesday and is due to meet his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI today.