The son of a butcher, he was born in Mafra, Santa Catarina, as one of eight children and completed his theological studies at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian and Pontifical Lateran Universities.
They are especially annoyed by the dropping of the plan for a new metro line, because it is now unclear how those enormous crowds will cross the centre of the city from the basilica of St Peter to that of St John Lateran.
In light of such precedents, the 108-acre sovereign territory of Vatican City State, mapped out on a page of the 1929 Lateran Pacts with Italy, seems a modest guarantee of the Holy See's independence (though the signature of Benito Mussolini on the page's lower right-hand corner does lend a sinister touch).