Sri Lanka, May 9 -- The newly elected Pope Leo XIV has urged the Catholic Church to urgently address a growing lack of faith in his inaugural mass at the Vatican.

Speaking just a day after his election as the 267th Pope and the first American to lead the Church, he cautioned that individuals were increasingly abandoning faith in favour of "technology, money, success, power, or pleasure."

In his first address as Pontiff, Pope Leo declared that he had been chosen to serve as a "faithful administrator" of a Church that would act as a "beacon that illuminates the dark nights of this world."

The ascension of Robert Francis Prevost to the papacy has been met with widespread celebration among the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, with particular...