POPE BENEDICT XVI told yesterday how he had prayed to God not to impose the burden of the papacy on him during last week’s conclave to chose a successor to John Paul II.

The Pope’s confession came as he fulfilled his promise to reach out to other faiths, holding talks with Muslim leaders as well as non-Catholic Christians, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

Dr Williams, accompanied by his wife, Jane, and a delegation of Anglican leaders in what was his first meeting with Pope Benedict, did not have a separate audience with the Pope but formed part of a wider ecumenical group, including Orthodox leaders.

The Pope told German pilgrims that as it became clear during last week’s conclave that he was receiving an increasing number of votes he had prayed to be spared. An unnamed cardinal, however, had slipped him a note reminding him that Christ had called St Peter to follow him even if he did not want to do so.

The new Pope, 78, said that he had hoped to spend his last years reading and writing in peace and quiet. “At a certain point, I prayed to God, ‘Please don’t do this to me . . .’ Evidently, this time he didn’t listen to me.” He also told the German pilgrims his first papal joke — a further sign that he aims to prove he is not the remote doctrinaire figure his critics claim. He apologised to them for arriving 20 minutes late, and said this lack of Germanic punctuality showed that he had “become a bit of an Italian” in his 23 years in Rome.

To resounding cheers he smilingly reassured his fellow countrymen — in German — that he was, nonetheless, still a Bavarian.

Yesterday, Dr Williams, at a joint press conference with the Archbishop of Westminister, Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor, praised the Pope for going out of his way to emphasise Christian unity and inter-faith dialogue in his first speeches. The Pope again pledged to pursue “our common passion for Christian unity” in the spirit of his predecessor.

Pope Benedict failed to mention Islam in his inaugural homily, but made amends by meeting Muslim clerics and vowing to build friendship. He said that he appreciated the growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians.

Yesterday, in his first Mass outside St Peter’s, the Pope prayed at the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls — the burial place of St Paul — for the missionary dynamism of his predecessor.

However, in a hint that at 78 he will not travel as much as the “Pilgrim Pope”, he said that the late Pope’s energy in carrying the Gospel to all corners of the Earth was "truly inimitable".

CANTERBURY GIFT

The original Canterbury Cross found in the city dates from about 850

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