World welcomes Pope Francis as humble champion of poor

SANTIAGO/LONDON (Reuters) - Latin America's Roman Catholics rejoiced that the new Pope Francis is one of their own, while elsewhere the world has hailed him as a humble champion of the poor and wished him the strength to lead the Church out of crisis.

Commentators said Francis had a reputation for being as conservative as his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, but Latin American Catholics celebrated the fact that the cardinals had, in his words, gone "to the end of the world" to find him.