The first new Pope to appear there for nearly 27 years, he struck an immediate rapport with an enthusiastic crowd of 50,000. Given his reputation as a bookish theologian, he displayed a surprising degree of the showmanship of his precedessor, who had made the midday Angelus prayers on Sunday a much-loved ritual.

The Pope’s voice trembled uncertainly at the start, but gradually became more confident. He was repeatedly applauded when he referred to John Paul II.

“I address you, my very dear brothers and sisters, for the first time from this window that the beloved figure of my predecessor made familiar to countless people in the entire world,” he said from the third-floor window of the papal apartment, He moved there at the weekend, nearly two weeks after his election.

The apartment was sealed after the death of John Paul II. Pope Benedict broke the seal after his election, but until yesterday had lived in St Martha’s, the Vatican hotel used by cardinals during the conclave, while the papal apartment was renovated. He moved in to the apartment with his piano, books and, according to Italian media reports, two cats.

“Cats have always been Pope Benedict’s passion,” said La Stampa. “The caricature of him as a remote and austere hardliner is clearly misplaced.”

Corriere della Sera quoted Sister Ingrid Stampa, the Pope’s long-serving German housekeeper as saying that “the only cats he has are made of porcelain”. However, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa and formerly the Pope’s deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the Pope “often talks to cats at length, usually in German, and they follow him home, fascinated”. Cardinal Bertone said that the Swiss Guard had even complained that because of the Pope “cats are invading the Holy See”.

In his Angelus remarks, the Pope said that “from Sunday to Sunday, John Paul II faithfully kept to an appointment which became a cherished habit and accompanied for more than a quarter of a century the history of the Church and of the world”. He added that he was also thinking of him “at that other window”, a reference to his funeral oration, in which he said: “We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father ’s house, that he sees us and blesses us.”

He observed that yesterday marked the Orthodox Easter and vowed to continue the drive for Christian unity. He also noted that his first Sunday Angelus coincided with May Day, the festival of labour and of St Joseph, patron saint of manual labour. “You may recall that my name too is Joseph,” the Pope said in an impromptu aside, to cheers.

John Paul died three days after his last appearance at the window, when he tried to speak but was only able to raise his hand in blessing. Yesterday Benedict deplored “wars, poverty and diseases” and referred to violence after elections in Togo, where he was praying for “harmony and peace”.

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