Pope Leo XIV: Pontiff leaves Vatican for first time to visit Francis' tomb and Marian shrine

Pope Leo XIV has taken his first trip outside the Vatican, heading about an hour’s drive east of Rome for a visit to a Catholic shrine and stopping on the way back to pay respects at the tomb of his predecessor Francis.

Leo waved from the passenger side of a Volkswagen vehicle as he arrived at Rome’s St Mary Major Basilica.

Entering the church to a few shouts of “Viva il papa” (Long live the Pope), Leo walked slowly to Francis’ tomb, laying a white flower on it.

He then knelt in prayer for a few moments.

Leo made the trip to St Mary Major after travelling to the small town of Genazzano, where he had earlier visited a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Leo, the former US cardinal Robert Prevost, was elected pontiff on Thursday (Friday AEST).

He is a member of the Augustinian religious order, which runs the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano.

Leo shook hands and offered blessings to a few people in the crowd before entering the shrine.

At the end of the visit there, the Pope told those in the shrine that he wanted to come to pray for guidance in the first days of his papacy, according to a Vatican statement.

The late Pope Francis, who died on April 21, made surprise visits to Catholic sites near Rome quite frequently.

He asked to be buried at St Mary Major in a simple tomb, decorated only with an inscription of the word “Franciscus,” his name in Latin.

Francis had a special devotion to the basilica, another Marian shrine.

In the first days after his burial, more than 30,000 people packed the church to visit his final resting place.

Pope Leo signalled earlier on Saturday he would continue with the vision and reforms of Pope Francis, telling cardinals the late pontiff left a “precious legacy” that must carry on.

In his first meeting with all the cardinals since his election as pontiff on May 8, Leo also asked the senior clerics to renew their commitment to major Church reforms enacted by the landmark Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Leo said Francis broadly had a vision of opening the staid 1.4-billion-member Church to the modern world, had left an “example of complete dedication to service”.

“Let us take up this precious legacy and continue on the journey,” the Pope told the cardinals in a speech.

The pontiff also asked the clerics to “renew together our complete commitment” to the reforms enacted by the Council, which included celebrating the Mass in local languages rather than Latin and pursuing dialogue with other religions.