With wails resounding amid the splendour of the Sistine Chapel, Pope Francis today baptised 32 infants, and at one point in the ceremony telling mothers to feel free to feed their crying babies.
Formally welcoming the children as members of the Catholic church, Francis poured water from a shell-shaped dish over the heads of the babies held in their mothers' arms.
Francis pronounced the babies' names one by one, as beaming parents held their children, dressed in white satin or silk gowns and other finery, in the chapel whose ceiling was frescoed by Michelangelo.
In the same chapel in March, Francis was elected as the first Latin American pope. He is the first pope to choose the name Francis. Among the children were two Francescas.
It wasn't clear if Francis, whose cheerfulness and warmth draws huge crowds to the Vatican, might have inspired the choice of those names.
In keeping with his down-to-earth style and his drive to make the Church more relevant in the everyday lives of the faithful, the pope has done away with much of the pomp and stiffness often characterising papal appearances.
He noted that that some babies were crying. "If they are hungry, mothers, feel free to feed them," Francis said during his homily.
The Sistine Chapel choir sang during the ceremony, but Francis said that "today the most beautiful chorus is that of the babies."
Trying to shore up flagging faith among many Catholics, Francis told parents that the most beautiful inheritance they could give their children was faith.
