VATICAN CITY — Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected the first non-European pope in more than 1,000 years on Wednesday, signaling the beginning of a new era for a church combating scandal and internal strife.

Described as a conservative with "great compassion," the 76-year-old will be known as His Holiness Pope Francis. He will be installed at the Vatican on Tuesday.

The new pontiff named himself after the humble Catholic friar St. Francis of Assisi. President Barack Obama hailed the new leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics as a "champion of the poor."

The first Latin American pope was introduced from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

There was an audible gasp from the rain-soaked crowd - an indication that he had not been a widely tipped choice - followed by a roar and wild applause.

In Italian, he seemed to address his outsider status by joking: "As you know the duty of the conclave is to give Rome a bishop. It seems that my brother cardinals went almost to the end of the world."

“Pray for me and I will see you soon," he added, asking Catholics to also pray for his predecessor Benedict XVI, who abdicated on Feb. 28. "Have a good evening and rest well.”

His first act on Thursday will be to visit his predecessor, the Pope Emeritus, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan told reporters later.

A vocal advocate for Argentina’s poor during the economic crises that struck the country during the 1970s, Francis is the first Jesuit pope.

Vote: Was Pope Francis a good choice?

Known for his humility, Francis is the son of a railway worker and one of five siblings. He has a chemistry degree.

Francis has only one fully-functioning lung, the other having been partially removed due to an infection when he was a teenager. 

He prizes simplicity and is expected to encourage priests to do shoe-leather evangelization, according to his biographer.

Shortly after his election, Francis skipped the limousine and chose instead to ride on the last shuttle bus with other cardinals to go back to the Vatican for a meal.

"And as the last bus pulls up, guess who gets off? It's Pope Francis. I guess he told the driver 'That's OK, I'll just go with the boys,'" Dolan told reporters.

Later, during the dinner, Dolan said Francis showed his humorous side.

"We toasted him and when he toasted us he said: 'May God forgive you,' which brought the house down," he said.

About an hour before Francis emerged on the balcony, white smoke rose above the Sistine Chapel and bells rang out across Rome to signal a decision had been made.

The unveiling of the new pope was moment of pure joy for the 100,000 pilgrims, tourists and other onlookers in St Peter's Square.  

"Who is this?" asked Deirdre Sweeney from Boston, Mass., when Francis first walked onto the balcony.

"Argentinian!" shouted a man nearby.

 “I think this is wonderful,” said Sweeney’s husband, Kevin. “It's an incredible breakthrough. It's a great recognition for the church that the church is not euro-centric anymore."

Another man shouted: "It’s very gutsy that he chose the name Francis, he’s going to be the first Francis. He wants to be a humble pope and build the church up, from a time of ruin, like St. Francis of Assisi."

Smoke billowed from the chimney at 7:07 p.m. local time (2:07 p.m. ET) on the second day of behind-closed-doors voting.

The cardinals are thought to have taken five ballots to reach the two-thirds of the vote necessary for a decision.

The new pontiff's debut was heralded by a Latin announcement beginning with the phrase "Habemus Papam!" meaning, "We have a pope!"

George Weigel, NBC News' Vatican analyst, said Francis would be "a great defender of religion around the world.”

“The papacy has moved to the New World. The church has a new pope with a new name,” he added. “I think it speaks to the church’s commitment to the poor of the world and compassion in a world that often needs a lot of healing.”

Obama said the choice of the first pope from the Americas spoke "to the strength and vitality" of a region "that is increasingly shaping our world."

"Alongside millions of Hispanic Americans, those of us in the United States share the joy of this historic day," the president said in a statement.

Now known as Pope Emeritus, Francis' predecessor Benedict watched Wednesday's events from a temporary lakeside residence at Castel Gandolfo while his permanent living quarters inside Vatican City are refurbished.

The behind-the-scenes ballot process that took place in the Sistine Chapel should still remain a secret. Both the cardinals and staff working alongside them swore an oath of secrecy as the conclave got under way, with the threat of ex-communication for anyone breaking the church's ancient code.

NBC News' Yuka Tachibana and Richard O'Kelly, and Reuters contributed to this report.

Slideshow: Pope Francis I: His life before the papacy

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Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected to lead the Catholic Church following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. 

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This story was originally published on Wed Mar 13, 2013 4:14 AM EDT

L'Osservatore Romano

Now that they have bid farewell to Pope Benedict XVI, the cardinals begin the work of choosing his replacement. It begins in earnest Monday with official meetings and off-the-record dinners where alliances are forged and names are considered, experts say.

Let the papal politicking begin. The College of Cardinals will meet Monday for the first time since the pope's resignation.

Officially, the princes of the church will gather every day to deal with important ecclesiastical business -- setting a start date for the conclave, receiving reports on the state of church affairs around the world.

But Vaticanologists say the most significant discussions will unfold at private apartments, in restaurant back rooms, around the coffee urn, as cardinals meet in small groups to suss out who among them will be the front-runners to become the next pope when they are locked up for voting some time before March 20.

"All the real business takes place at night over anisette and grappa," said Christopher Bellitto, associate professor of history at Kean University.

Gossip will be traded and names will be Googled. Coalitions will start to form, and lists of first and second choices will start to take form.

L'Osservatore Romano

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, shown here with Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, will preside over the general congregations that start Monday and give papal candidates a forum to shine.

"This is the chance, especially for the cardinals out of Rome who don't travel a lot, to get to know the other cardinals better," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, Vatican analyst for the National Catholic Reporter.

Once or twice a day, the cardinals will converge on the Vatican for what are called general congregations, formal meetings that could touch on a wide range of worldly and spiritual issues -- from reforming the Roman bureaucracy to the church's "new evangelization" ethos.

A cardinal can boost or doom his chances during these confabs, which are presided over by the non-voting dean of the college, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, experts say.

Make a dismissive comment about the sexual abuse crisis and a potential candidate could lose the support of the Americans or Irish. One who stumbles on the subject of Islam could be written off by the African cardinals. But a lower-profile cardinal who impresses the group with his eloquence or energy could suddenly have dark-horse status.

After the congregations, the caucusing continues in informal, intimate settings.

"You're not going to do this in McDonald's," Reese said. "This is where the Roman cardinals have the home-court advantage because they have apartments, they probably have a cook, they know a restaurant with a private room where they can have three or four people for dinner."

James Weiss, a theology professor at Boston College, said it's an intricate dance, and this time there will be an overlay of intrigue because of the Vatican document leak scandal that exposed infighting and back-stabbing in the church hierarchy.

An internal report that may address accusations of financial skulduggery, sexual activity and even blackmail is being kept secret until the new pope is chosen.

"What's going to complicate this is they don't know who they can trust any more," Weiss said. "They know something bad was happening at the highest levels of the Vatican, but they don't know who. The level of distrust has not been this great since 1730."

Still, if recent history is any indication, by the time the 115 cardinal-electors actually go into the conclave -- not to emerge until the puff of white smoke is seen -- there will be a handful of front-runners.

It's possible none of those names are the one that will be announced outside St. Peter's. Two early leaders can cancel each other out, forcing their supporters to look for a compromise candidate who can get the two-thirds vote needed to score a pair of red shoes, Weiss said.

He said that unconfirmed reports out of the 1978 conclave -- all the ballots are technically secret, but there's always the possibility of post-election leaks -- had nearly 50 old-guard cardinals coalescing around a conservative.

When they realized their man would never reach the threshold, everyone started moving toward a more electable moderate, and Poland's Karol Wojtyła, championed by an Austrian cardinal, suddenly jumped from 18 to 30-plus votes. He became the new focus of the conclave and, eventually, Pope John Paul II.

While there is alliance-forging during the actual conclave, the opportunities are more limited, experts said.

There are two ballots every morning and night, and the process is tedious and time-consuming, with each cardinal taking an oath before casting a vote and the totals being tallied three times. It all happens in the Sistine Chapel, where silence is mandatory. There is no Internet access, so checking Google to see if a certain cardinal really said a certain something a few years back is impossible.

Jerry Lampen / Reuters file

There is a lot of politicking to be done before white smoke rises from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, as shown here in 2005.

Vatican watchers say the quicker the conclave happens, the less chance outsider cardinals will have time to research and talk up their colleagues. That likely benefits the cardinals of the Roman Curia who have the most to lose from major upheaval.

Modern conclaves have not lasted more than a few days -- not surprising, since the whole point of them is to make a quick decision.

They were created by Pope Gregory X after a papal election that dragged on for nearly three years, from 1268 to 1271, infuriating the people of the medieval town of Viterbo, where pontiffs lived at the time.

"The people of Viterbo had finally had it and locked the cardinals in a big hall until they elected someone. They still wouldn't elect, so the good people of Viterbo ripped the roof off the hall. They still wouldn't elect, so then they started to give them only bread and water," Bellitto said.

The townspeople finally threatened to start throwing garbage down on the cardinals if they didn't settle their differences, and "lo and behold, they elected Pope Gregory," he said.

Gregory decided that all future elections would be done by conclave with the cardinals cut off from the world until they picked a new leader.

For this election, a repeat of Viterbo isn't in the cards, but some speculate it could be the longest conclave of the last 100 years.

"While there are many possible candidates, there is no front-runner or front-runners, as there was in 2005," said NBC News Vatican expert George Weigel. "There's also a sense that this is a critical moment in the church's history, the cardinals aren't all that familiar with each other, and thus there's a concern to take the time required to get the decision right."

He guessed that if it isn't over in two days, it could take as long as two weeks, but Weiss thinks the cardinals are under pressure to get it done in three days or less for public relations reasons.

"One thing they're all concerned about is maintaining face," he said. "And once it goes beyond three days, the world knows the divisions are running pretty deep."

Slideshow: Pope Benedict XVI's departure

Ettore Ferrari / EPA

The pope delivers his final audience in St. Peter's Square as he prepares to stand down.

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A meeting with the red-clad “princes of the church.” A 10-minute helicopter ride to Castel Gandolfo. A quick wave from the balcony to throngs in a candlelit square.

That’s the script for Pope Benedict XVI’s final hours as spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics before his resignation becomes official at 8 p.m. Thursday -- ending an often rocky eight-year tenure and launching the church into a potentially contentious search for his replacement.

His farewell address has already happened – a speech Wednesday morning before a cheering crowd of more than 100,000 in front of St. Peter’s, where he acknowledged moments of great joy and difficulty and asked followers to pray for him in his retirement.

The spotlight will remain on Benedict, however, for at least another day before attention turns to the highly ritualized conclave that will choose his successor.

Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela (3rd L) reacts while attending the last general audience of Pope Benedict XVI.

At 11 a.m. Thursday, Italian time, he is scheduled to meet the cardinals that have rushed to Rome for the historic event. Each will have the chance to say a few parting words to him, but a major speech is not expected.

The personal goodbyes will continue as he leaves the Apostolic Palace before 5 p.m. and is driven to the helipad, where Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, will see him off.

The 85-year-old pope knows how to fly a helicopter but presumably will rely on a pilot from the 13^th Squadron of the Italian Air Force for the jaunt to the hilltop town where he will live in his summer residence for a few months while a monastery in the Vatican Gardens is prepared for him.

Town priests are planning a prayer vigil in Castel Gandolfo to begin a few hours before Benedict’s arrival, and he is likely to bestow a brief greeting on the thousands crammed into the town square, clutching rosaries and candles.

Once he leaves Rome, there will be only a few more hours in his papacy, which officially ends at the stroke of 8 p.m. Thursday. From that moment on, he will be known as pope emeritus, and aides say a life of quiet reflection will commence.

“I think we’ll probably catch some glimpses of him walking in the garden,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke told NBC’s TODAY. “He’s not the kind of guy who is going on a book tour.”

At the Vatican, the Swiss Guards will go off duty – and the cardinals will be officially called back to work the next day with a formal announcement of what’s called the sede vacante, Latin for "the seat being vacant."

A Vatican spokesman told the Catholic News Service the college will probably not meet over the weekend but could gather the following Monday for informal talks to set a date for the conclave and begin talking about priorities for 266th pope.

Under old church law, the conclave couldn’t start until March 15, but an amendment this week will allow the cardinals to push up the date as along as all 115 electors are in place. There were supposed to be 117, but one is too sick to attend and another recused himself after being accused of inappropriate behavior with priests.

And, of course, the Vatican guesthouse where the cardinals will stay during the conclave must be swept for listening devices before they can move in for the duration.

The length of the conclave — with its four secret ballots a day, cast in the Sistine Chapel — is anyone's guess; it took just two days to elect Benedict and three to choose his predecessor, John Paul II.

Vatican watchers say there is no clear front-runner and Benedict's legacy will loom large as they look to the future.

An introverted theologian, he is credited with pushing the "new evangelization" and repairing rifts with Jews but faulted for not taking stronger action as a sex-abuse scandal tarnished the church's reputation and letting the Vatican bureaucracy run amok.

He alluded to the crises during Wednesday's address, saying he had often felt like "St. Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of ​​Galilee."

"The Lord has given us many days of sunshine and gentle breeze, days in which the catch has been abundant," he said. "[But] there have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the Church it has ever been — and the Lord seemed to sleep."

Slideshow: Pope Benedict XVI's departure

Gabriel Bouys / AFP - Getty Images

The pope delivers his final audience in St. Peter's Square as he prepares to stand down.

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Tony Gentle / Reuters

New Cardinal James Michael Harvey of U.S. (right) is congratulated by another cardinal during a consistory ceremony in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Saturday.

Update at 7.20 a.m. ET on Nov. 24: Milwaukee Archbishop James Harvey and five others were made cardinals by Pope Benedict Saturday, Reuters reports. He reminded them that they wear red vestments because they must be ready to defend the faith "even to the shedding of your blood" in a ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica.

Published on Nov. 23, 2012: ROME — The red, or rather scarlet, carpet will be rolled in St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday for the elevation of six cardinals. The new so-called "princes of the church" will receive their ring, scarlet skullcap and the traditional biretta, a four-cornered hat, in a solemn ceremony presided by Pope Benedict XVI.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, speaks with people waiting for free Thanksgiving groceries at the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Memorial Community Center in Harlem on Tuesday.

"Cardinal Dolan is definitely a candidate and enjoys a lot of name recognition — which helps in a global church," Alessandro Speciale, Vatican correspondent at the Religious News Service, told NBC News.

"But two factors might weaken his chances: coming from the world's only superpower could still be seen as a negative factor in a global church, and he has never held a leadership position in the Roman Curia," he said, referring to the Holy See's administrative body.  

In any case, the choice of non-Europeans to high office in the Vatican is a way for the Holy See to shift the balance of power towards other continents and prove the “universality of the church.” 

"There was considerable criticism of the last group of cardinals being too European, too Italianate, and too Curial. I think it's fair to read this group as a response to that criticism," Weigel said.

Speciale agrees: "The previous Consistory in February had been criticized for being overly skewed towards Italy (and more in general Europe) and, again, the Curia. With this quite unusual second batch of red hats in a year, Benedict wanted to show his attention to the rest of the world."

Slideshow: The life of Pope Benedict XVI

Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Look back at his life from childhood through his papacy.

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Whatever the reason for the choice of non-European Cardinals, the selection plays in favor of the American grouping, which will have one more elector in their ranks.

"The power of Americans in the Vatican has grown significantly in the last few years: not just because of the star power of Cardinal Dolan but also thanks to the organization, economic resources and boldness in the defense of Catholic values in front of a perceived hostile society is admired by many in the Vatican," Speciale said.

"But it remains to be seen whether this numerical weight will actually translate into influence at the Conclave: though national links are powerful, many other factors — the strongest being whether one is part on not of the Roman Curia — play into the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel."

When the time comes, all Cardinals-electors from all over the world will "lock" themselves in the Sistine Chapel in order to vote for a new Pope. While it is unclear who will emerge from it as the new leader of the world's Catholics, one thing is certain: that American influence in that choice went up a notch.

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