African and Asian Catholics quickly identified with the new Pope's chosen name, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the 12th century saint who spurned wealth to pursue a life of poverty, as a sign of a fresh direction in the global Church.

"This will be the pope of the poor since he also comes from the far corners of the earth," said Celso Dias, a 39-year-old law firm worker, as he stopped to pray at the whitewashed Santo Antonio da Polana Cathedral in the Mozambican capital Maputo.

On the outskirts of Nigeria's commercial metropolis Lagos, Father Raymond Anoliefo, who runs a parish Church at Ibeju, said he was heartened to hear that Bergoglio had criticized the Argentine government for not doing enough to tackle poverty.

"The problems he has in his country are the same as ours: poverty, corruption," he said. "It's encouraging to have someone from the developing world. This is 'our pope'".

In the Philippines, where more than 80 percent of the population are Catholic, Church leaders saw the selection of the first non-European pontiff in well over a millennium as a just recognition that the face of global Catholicism was changing.

"Pope Francis will have a grasp of what the Church faces in the Third World, where people are poor and yet the faith is growing fast," said Jose Palma, the Archbishop of Cebu, the largest archdiocese in the Philippines.

"In contrast, we see a decline of our faith in the more affluent Europe," he added.