VATICAN CITY — As white smoke streamed Tuesday from the slender chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel where the cardinals met to elect a new pope, the crowd of tens of thousands filling St. Peter's Square surged forward.
They shouted with excitement: "Habemus papam!" (We have a pope!)
Some cheered, some sang. Many whipped out cellphones and typed in the words "white smoke."
But when Chilean Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez announced that the new leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics was Joseph Ratzinger, electricity seemed to give way to matter-of-factness.
"We don't know much about him, except that he's quite closely linked with John Paul II," said Ursula Kelly of County Derry, Ireland, who was in Rome with her husband for their 15th wedding anniversary. "But we're just so glad to see it."
Some groups applauded, some cheered, but the overwhelming sentiment was that a larger figure loomed over the scene -- Pope John Paul II, who died this month.
"It's a hard act to follow. He is the only pope I've known," said Paul Anderson, 25, a resident advisor for Chicago's Loyola University semester abroad program in Rome who had come to the square every day since John Paul fell gravely ill.
Ratzinger seemed to sense John Paul's shadow as well. When he emerged onto the marble balcony of St. Peter's Basilica overlooking the square, the first sentence he uttered as Benedict XVI was an acknowledgment of his predecessor's power.
"After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me -- a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord," he said in Italian.
He raised his arms in greeting, turning from side to side, clasped his hands together and blew a kiss to the crowd, which filled the vast square and spilled into adjoining streets. The new pope appeared a bit stiff, perhaps not yet used to performing before a vast public.
Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, who was looking down on the same crowd from an adjacent balcony, later described a scene of majesty as he gazed over St. Peter's Square. "I was on the balcony to the right and what a view it was! All these tens of thousands of people and the wonderful welcome they gave the new pope. You heard them chant 'Benedetto, Benedetto,' " the new pope's name in Italian. "So it started off well," he said.
