Pope Francis ditches red shoes

In his first two days in the job, Francis wore an ordinary pair of black shoes, having apparently rejected the smart red loafers that were favoured by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Benedict had his red shoes hand-made for him by a cobbler in the Borgo, the tightly-packed grid of medieval streets that lies a stone's throw from the Vatican.

A pair of the red shoes had been made for his successor and were displayed in the shop window of Gammarelli, the papal tailors in Rome, in the days before the conclave.

Before he left Buenos Aires for Rome, Cardinal Bergoglio, as he was before his election on Wednesday, was wearing a pair of shoes so shabby that friends insisted on buying him a new pair.

"The day he was departing for the conclave, a couple of friends brought him a pair of shoes. He's always very humbly dressed and the shoes he was wearing were not in very good shape," a pair of South American priests told Vatican Radio.

So even (in) those little things you see the humility, the austerity of this pastor," said Ricardo Saenz, of Argentina, and Carlos Padilla, a Mexican seminarian.

Separately, a picture emerged yesterday of the new pontiff travelling on a minibus to the Sistine Chapel rather than take a chauffeur-driven Vatican car.

He eschewed the official papal limousine, which boasts the registration number SCV1, for Stato della Citta del Vaticano, instead hopping on the bus with a group of red-hatted cardinals.

The photo, which The Daily Telegraph believes was taken when he travelled from the Vatican hotel, Casa Santa Marta to the Apostolic Palace on Thursday, for his Mass and homily in the Sistine Chapel.

It was taken the day after Francis's election, was taken by a priest, Father Antonio Spadaro.

He posted it on his Facebook page but this morning it was on the front page of La Stampa, an Italian daily.