Polls since the inauguration show that Francis has a very high popularity rating—according to the Pew Research Center, 84 percent of American Catholics view the new pope favorably, and an IPR Marketing poll found that 92 percent of Italian Catholics are happy with the new pontiff. The numbers are even higher in Argentina, with only two percent of the population having a negative opinion of Francis, according to a poll by Poliarquía, conducted for the daily La Nación.

A photo of Pope Francis inside the Argentine Church of Rome. Jordi Oliveres / Religio.

The Rev. Alonso Freiberger, 30, a priest from Bergoglio’s home diocese, said that Francis’ affectionate and less formal style is characteristic of Latin American culture, as is his emphasis on helping the poor and the marginalized. Freiberger said he thinks the way in which Bergoglio delivers this message will be a very important part of his legacy. “He’s not saying anything new, he’s just saying it with different words than the ones Benedict or John Paul II used,” he said. “His words sound more comprehensible; they’re in a language that is more understandable.”

Francis’ charisma and pastoral manner generated a palpable excitement in St. Peter’s square the day of his installation mass. Mariana Casas, 40, from Mexico City, was in tears after Pope Francis drove by her in the Popemobile before his first homily. “I’m very impressed by his closeness,” she said. “By the fact that we are not masses, but individuals [to him].”  Cristian Pascuchelo, 30, made the trip from Buenos Aires exclusively for the installation. “I thought this could be a historical moment to see a change in the church,” he said, holding an Argentine flag.

Just how much of a change Pope Francis will bring to the church, and how big a role his Argentine heritage will play in his papacy, remains to be seen, but experts inside and outside the Vatican say that big changes are not in store. “The doctrine will not change,” is how Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, the Secretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, bluntly put it in a meeting with the Religio team in Rome.

Daniel Levine, author of “Politics, Religion and Society in Latin America” and a professor of political science at University of Michigan shared a similar view.  “The fact that he is Latin American is going to energize the Catholic Church, given that Latin America has 40 percent of the world’s Catholics,” he said in a phone interview, referring to Francis. “But in terms of his own openness to structural change, I think it’s pretty limited.” Levine said he thinks Francis will not be open to structural changes because “he is basically a conservative person with a conservative theology and with a conservative political stance.”

The Catholic Church in Argentina has historically been very conservative, most notably because of its ties to the country’s last military dictatorship. “Even within Argentina there’s not one single church,” said Amy Young, a Latin American history professor at The Catholic University of America in Michigan, in a phone interview. “There’s the dominant conservative hierarchy, but there are also liberal bishops and liberal priests and liberal orders…The thing that’s important is that the more powerful members of the hierarchy were more politically conservative and, if they weren’t supportive of the military dictatorship, they weren’t outspoken critics of it.”

Young shared Levine’s perspective about Francis falling on the conservative side of the spectrum. “I think the conventional wisdom on him is that he’s socially conservative,” she said. “That’s not really a surprise because everybody who was being considered for the papacy is socially conservative. But the way that he is different is in that he is from the Americas and he has, by many accounts, lived a humble life and he has chosen to emphasize his solidarity with the poor…and in those ways he could really excite the base in Latin America.”

Energizing the faithful in Latin America would be an important accomplishment for the church considering that, according to a Pew Research Center study, the percentage of Catholics in Latin America dropped from 90 percent at the beginning of the 20^th century to 72 percent in 2010. According to Young, many of the Latin Americans leaving the church are joining Protestant churches or becoming secularized.

Young said Francis’ message of caring for the poor could resonate with the people who are leaving the church. “The people who are leaving the church for evangelical churches tend to be lower middle class, urban poor, so it could be a very effective tactic,” she said. “I also think, though, that there are some structural problems that will have to be addressed if the church wants to put a stop to the loss of its population or to people converting out.” According to Young, one of the biggest problems the church faces, and needs to make structural changes to fix, is a decline in vocations. “The fewer priests and nuns they have, the less they’re able to provide a Catholic education and to minister to the community and to reach people at the grassroots level,” she said.

Advocates of a more open church have suggested that allowing the ordination of women and a married priesthood could boost the dwindling numbers of seminarians. Conservatives expect that Francis will hold the line on those issues but will articulate the church’s position in a more convincing way than his predecessor popes. “I don’t think he is going to change things like that,” said Freiberger, referring to Francis. “It’s not about erasing everything and starting from scratch. Tradition has its reasons and I think he will help us rediscover that.”

According to an article by Young, the church’s traditional positions on social issues, like contraception, abortion and gay marriage, may also clash with increasingly liberal Latin American societies, particularly in urban areas. Mexico, Uruguay, and Argentina have all legalized gay marriage, and abortion is legal in Mexico City since 2007 and in Uruguay since 2012. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio was an adamant opponent of gay marriage and government programs to distribute contraceptives. “I don’t see any movement on any of those things, or on the position of women in the church,” said Levine. “I’m sort of pessimistic about it; it’s very controversial. Maybe he’ll be very different in office than his record states, but I wouldn’t think so.”

ROME – An estimated 150,000 people from around the world gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday morning for the inaugurating mass of Pope Francis. The pope’s first mass emphasized humility and service for the poor, values that have already become characteristic of Francis in the six days since his election.

“Let us never forget that authentic power is service, and that the pope too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service,” the pope said standing under a crimson and gold canopy atop the stairs of St. Peter’s Basilica. “He must open his arms to protect all of God’s people and embrace with tender affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important.”

Worshipers in St. Peter’s Square gather for Pope Francis’ installment mass. Marie Telling / Religio.

The installment mass was held on the Catholic saints day dedicated to St. Joseph, the husband of the mother of Jesus. Pope Francis used the occasion to speak about the role Joseph played in protecting Jesus and Mary and the broader implications of the concept of protection. “It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us,” he said. “In the end, everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of God’s gifts!”

Dignitaries from more than a hundred countries, including U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and representatives of different faiths attended the ceremony. “Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: let us be ‘protectors’ of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment,” said the pope.

To many, Francis brings a new simplicity and humility to a church known for its ostentation. “In St. Peter’s Square you can really see Catholic pomp and opulence,” said Maximilian Ford, 21, an English student of theology who was present at the inauguration. But it is important to remember—as Francis seems to do—that God plays no favorites, he added. “He’s the God of the rich and the poor.”

José Enrique Amaya, 24, a Mexican seminarian who was also present at the ceremony, agreed. Like St. Francis of Assisi who famously said,  “Preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words,” Amaya expects Pope Francis to lead by example in the transformation of an opulent church.

“Poverty is a sensitive subject because of the economic crisis,” said Jorge Mora, another Seminarian from Mexico. “But one has to see it as an opportunity to discover spiritual wealth.”

Peter Paul Saldanha, 49, a Professor at Pontifico Collegio Urbano, made a similar point when comparing Francis to Pope Benedict XVI. “Ratzinger is a great thinker, theologian—he explains the mystery of god,” he said. “Bergoglio is more of a pastor, more of the beauty of the people—wisdom is found in ordinary people.”

Francis’ desire to be close to the people seemed evident to many of those present when he entered St. Peter’s square in an open-top car before the mass, smiling serenely and waving at the congregation. Francis was driven round the square for about 15 minutes and crowds rushed to the barricades nearest to where he was passing, hoping to catch a glimpse of the pontiff. At one point Francis got out of his car and kissed the hands of a sick man. On several occasions he kissed babies raised to him from the crowd by members of his extensive security detail.

The excitement in the congregation was palpable after the pope left the square and headed to the basilica to begin the traditional rituals of inauguration—the imposition of the papal pallium, the presentation of the papal ring, and the obedience. Some people were in tears while others, like Pedro Corraopietroa, the father of 6-month-old Ana María, one of the babies kissed by the pope, could not contain their elation and shared cell phone photos and videos with each other of what they had witnessed only moments earlier.

“It’s an excitement you can’t explain,” said Marina Casa, 40, who came to Rome from Mexico City exclusively for the inauguration. “God blessed us with a Latin American pope. I ask him to come closer to the whole world and to make the church grow with his grace and character and bring it closer to the people.”

A priest gives communion to Catholics at Pope Francis’ installment mass. Marie Telling / Religio.

Kalyona Aloysious, 26, a theology student and seminarian originally from Uganda, said he thinks the pope is already accomplishing this. “I think he’s down to Earth, he’s just open. He speaks about something openly and precise. He’s not talking about an abstract situation, but something clear,” he said. “And you see it when he speaks about something, you see the reaction of the people because he is speaking of what people really are experiencing, not something that is so far from them.”

Paola David, 40, who is from Argentina, said she felt great pride in having a pope from her country and thought the church would benefit from Argentinian style Catholicism, which she described as, “Announce and denounce: announce Christ and denounce injustice.”

Pope Francis’ alleged failure to denounce injustices during Argentina’s dirty war in the 1970s has raised some controversy since his election. Cristian Pascuchelo, 30, who came to St. Peter’s from Buenos Aires for the inauguration, summed up what seemed to be the prevailing attitude in the square about the controversy. “People didn’t know about it at the time,” he said. “The father acted according to what he knew and did what he could.”

But the overwhelming feeling of the ceremony was one of adoration and celebration. At the end of the mass, the choir’s spellbinding hymns filling the air, hundreds of priests walked into the square to offer communion to worshipers. Flags from all parts of the world waved high as thousands of people, many of whom did not share a common language, peacefully lined up to take communion under a vast blue sky.

“The weather today is beautiful,” said Tran Minh Khanh, a 35-year seminarian from Bien Hoa, Vietnam.  “Yesterday it was raining and tomorrow it’s also supposed to rain. But today, with the blue skies and sunshine, it is a blessing from God.”

Additional reporting by Jesse Marx, Jeff Tyson, Angela Reece and Morgan M. Davis.  Video by Harman Boparai and Stephen Jiwanmall.