POPE BENEDICT XVI was installed as leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics in a colourful, centuries-old ceremony yesterday, and he started his pontificate with a ringing call for spiritual revival in a barren world of secularism, consumerism, corruption, exploitation and environmental destruction.

“The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast,” the 78-year-old pontiff declared at an open-air inauguration Mass watched by monarchs, Presidents and Prime Ministers and by 350,000 faithful packed into St Peter’s Square and the boulevard reaching down to the Tiber.

The new Pope, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, used the occasion to urge Christian unity and to reach out to other faiths, even to non-believers. He said that the late John Paul II had been “welcomed by the Saints”, a hint that he will canonise his predecessor as many Catholics have demanded.

Adopting a humble tone at odds with his hardline image, he also described himself as a “weak servant of God” and asked repeatedly for help as he followed in the footsteps of John Paul II, whom he served for 24 years as head of the Doctrine of the Faith. “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves,” he implored.

During the service Pope Benedict accepted the Fisherman’s Ring, which Popes wear in memory of St Peter, and a woollen pallium, or mantle, symbolising his leadership of the Church. A rite of allegiance was performed by 12 people from around the world, and prayers or scriptures were read in English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, Greek and Latin.

The Pope’s homily was interrupted more than 30 times by applause from the throng of pilgrims, many from his native Germany.

After the three-hour ceremony he toured the square in an open Popemobile, though he shook no hands. Later, in St Peter’s Basilica, he greeted dignitaries including the Duke of Edinburgh, Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, and the King and Queen of Spain. President Bush was represented by his brother Jeb, the Governor of Florida.

The Pope used his homily to paint a grim picture of the state of the world. “The Earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in. They have been made instead to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.”

Too many people were living in deserts — “the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love, the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life”.

“We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light.” But, he said: “The net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters and death and brings us into the splendours of God’s light, into true life.”

He recalled John Paul II’s exhortation at his enthronement in October 1978: “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ.” Pope Benedict reached out “with great affection” to “our brothers and sisters of the Jewish people, to whom we are joined by a great shared spiritual heritage” — a particularly pertinent message given his German nationality and obligatory service in the Hitler Youth.

To non-Catholic Christians he declared: “Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd.” He continued: “Like a wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today, believers and non-believers alike.” However, he did not mention Muslims.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, attended the inauguration and will meet the new Pope today.

Dr Williams preached last night not only at All Saints, the Anglican Church in Rome, but also to the Catholic Community of Sant’Egidio. In a surprisingly low-key assessment, he praised “the commitment of the new Pope to Christian unity”, but said the journey involved much “stopping and starting” through “a huge, mysterious, great landscape where we cannot see the final horizon — where we shall never see the final horizon”. It was a situation in which, as Cardinal Newman had once said, “sometimes one step must be enough”.

The Pope willhold his first Mass today outside St Peter’s — not at St John Laterna, as is traditional, but at St Paul’s Without the Walls, the burial place of St Paul, a symbol of ecumenism, and the place where John XXIII created the Second Vatican Council.

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