While no one is suggesting that the pope went to the torture centres run by the military to hear confessions, he is alleged by rights activists to have withdrawn protection from two Jesuits who were later kidnapped and tortured, though subsequently freed. While the pope, who has testified in two Dirty War trials, says he lobbied for their release, Horacio Verbitsky, a journalist and author of a book on the church and the dictatorship, slammed him in an opinion piece in Página 12 as “the right person to cover up rottenness. He’s an expert in cover-ups”.

The former cardinal says he only learned about the dictatorship’s systematic plan to steal babies years after the end of the regime. HIJOS meanwhile, displayed its disgust in a poster on its website showing a photo montage of the new pope riding in an open-topped, blood-spattered Ford Falcon – the cars used for kidnappings – alongside junta members.

Hebe de Bonafini, head of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, said the lobby group of women whose children were “disappeared” under the dictatorship considered the official Argentine church “oppressive”. “We compiled a list of 150 priests murdered by the dictatorship that the official church kept quiet about ... about this pope that was named yesterday, all we have to say is: amen.”

Felipe Denegri, a longtime Chilean Jesuit priest who has since left the church, painted a picture of a divisive, power-hungry leader and a manipulator adept at winning sympathy through his humility. Joaquín Morales Solá, a commentator in La Nación newspaper who knows the pope and met him shortly before he left for the Vatican, called him “a balanced mix of pastor and politician”.

But the fact that the new Pope will meet the media before anyone else at a special audience on Saturday morning shows a vivid awareness that prayer may not be enough to deal with the situation facing the Catholic Church at this critical moment in its long history.

Francis is a Jesuit, a member of perhaps the most powerful and experienced religious order of the Catholic Church. The Jesuits are expert communicators and it is significant that one of the first people summoned to meet the new Pope this morning was Father Federico Lombardi, head of Vatican Radio (run for many years by the Jesuits) and the Vatican Press Office.

Under Pope Benedict, Father Lombardi was a mere functionary who had no direct access to the Pope. He could not pick up the phone and talk things through quickly - he just received orders from the Vatican Secretariat of State. That has now changed overnight.

Bergoglio was a high-ranking official in the Society of Jesus of Argentina when a military junta was installed in the South American country in 1976. According to the Los Angeles Times, priests Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics were kidnapped in May of that year by the navy. "They surfaced five months later, drugged and seminude, in a field," the Times reported. A 2005 lawsuit accused Bergoglio of unspecified involvement in the abductions. Reuters explains that "the military government secretly jailed [Yorio and Jalics] for their work in poor neighborhoods."

Bergoglio testified about the matter in 2010 after twice refusing to appear in open court, but "his answers were evasive, human rights attorney Myriam Bregman said."

In a homily before thousands of pilgrims and the most senior figures in the church, Angelo Sodano, the dean of the college of cardinals, made a last-ditch attempt to banish infighting, as he extolled the virtues of unity amid diversity.

But even as preparations for the mass were being made, Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan – and reportedly the hot favourite to be the next pope – suffered a blow. Anti-mafia detectives swooped on homes, offices, clinics and hospitals in Lombardy, the region around Milan, and elsewhere. A statement said the dawn raids were part of an investigation into "corruption linked to tenders by, and supplies to, hospitals".

Healthcare in Lombardy is the principal responsibility of the regional administration, which for the past 18 years has been run by Roberto Formigoni, a childhood friend of Scola and the leading political representative of the Communion and Liberation fellowship. Until recently, Scola was seen as the conservative group's most distinguished ecclesiastical spokesman.

The regional administration headed by Formigoni – a member of Silvio Berlusconi's party – collapsed last October amid a welter of accusations regarding alleged corruption and misconduct. The final blow came when one of his regional ministers was arrested, accused of buying votes from the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia.

Scola, who has headed the Milan archdiocese since 2011, is regarded as the champion of a largely non-Italian faction that is challenging the entrenched power of the Vatican cardinals. He was close to the last pope, whose household was run by women members of Communion and Liberation.

David Cameron’s moves to legalise same-sex marriage raise “troubling” questions about the laws that determine which Royal children can succeed to the throne, a peer has said.

Parliament is debating the Succession to the Crown Bill, which is intended to update royal laws to ensure that a first-born daughter to the Duke of Cambridge becomes Queen. Peers have considered amendments to the law which would make clear that only Royal children born in “a marriage between a man and a woman” could be considered valid heirs to the throne.

Under the 18th Century laws governing the succession, only an “heir to the body” can succeed. That phrase was intended to mean direct biological descendents of the monarch. Some experts now argue that advances in artificial insemination mean that the term needs to be redefined. Lord True told the Daily Telegraph he was not opposed to gay marriage, but believes that Royal laws should be updated to take account of it.

He said: “What happens if we have a lesbian queen in a same-sex marriage who conceives using an egg implanted with donor sperm? The law should be clear, but this is a question that has not been thought through in the Bill.” “As same sex marriage becomes part of the settled life of our kingdom, as the Prime Minister intends, the law [on successions] will inevitably evolve.”

Five weeks ago, at a marathon 32-hour Brussels summit, David Cameron secured a reduction in long-term European spending plans, the first in the EU's history. The Prime Minister hailed the EU cuts as the implementation of long overdue austerity in Brussels at a time when national governments were cutting back on spending.

The European Parliament demands, which hold the spending deal hostage until MEPs agree, could cost the British taxpayer up to £1.7 billion in extra EU contributions in 2013 at a time of deep cuts to domestic public spending. "The European Parliament cannot accept the proposal from the member states without the fulfilment of certain essential conditions," said Martin Schulz, the speaker of the EU assembly.

Additionally, MEPs have demanded a "compulsory, legally binding and comprehensive revision" of EU spending cuts in 2017 that could restore expenditure by a vote of Europe's leaders, stripping Britain of its veto. The parliament is also seeking more "flexibility" in spending to allow the EU to go to the top of expenditure ceilings and to roll cash over from one year to another between 2014 and 2020.

Most controversially, and without any prospect of agreement, MEPs have demanded that the EU create new taxes to fund the Brussels budget. Martin Callanan MEP, the leader of European Conservatives, accused the majority of the parliament, which rejected the cuts by 506 to 161 votes, of "flying in the face of public opinion". "The European Parliament is engaging in the worst kind of posturing, which makes it look completely out of touch with reality," he said. "The EU budget deal was a reasonable compromise between many competing demands."

“Often the line is very fine between the two but Hollande must maintain the idea that he is more left wing,” said Eric Bonnet, a political opinion analyst at BVA polling institute in Paris. “The big challenge for Hollande is to give his supporters the feeling that what he does is different from Sarkozy, to reassure them on his policies.”

“His wings are clipped,” said Mathieu Plane, an economist at research institute OFCE in Paris. “As long as he must comply with very tough austerity measures, as long the economy is not expanding to give him some leeway on state measures, his margin for maneuver is minimal.”

With no immediate hope for an economic recovery, Hollande’s program for 2013 is looking very similar to his predecessor’s, infuriating his political allies and supporters.