VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday he hoped to continue the openness with the media fostered by his predecessor and thanked journalists for their coverage during the "historically important" events during the papal transition.

"I hope to follow this dialogue with you, and I share, as Pope John Paul II observed concerning the faith, the development of social communications," the pontiff told more than 1,000 members of the media and pilgrims in the vast Vatican hall used for weekly general audiences.

In the session, which lasted about 15 minutes, Benedict noted that John Paul had been "a great artisan" of an "open and sincere" dialogue with the media that began with the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s. He noted that the media in the modern age has the capacity to reach "the whole of humanity."

Benedict is quickly setting the personal tone of his reign - and it's not the distant and strident papacy that many feared because of his long role as the church's watchdog of theology. An outdoor Mass in St. Peter's Square on Sunday is expected to draw half a million faithful and hundreds of dignitaries to Rome.

But first, the 78-year-old spiritual leader of the world's Roman Catholics has to formally take the papal throne.

Italian officials are putting tight security in place for the Mass in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, where dignitaries are expected to include German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder; Prince Albert II of Monaco and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the U.S. president's brother.

Also due to attend are the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; Chrisostomos, a top envoy for Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Christian Orthodox, and a senior representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Kirill.

Known as the Ceremony of Investiture, it will be celebrated by the senior cardinal deacon, Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, the Chilean who proclaimed Benedict's name to the world as the 265th pontiff. During the Mass, Benedict will receive his papal Fisherman's Ring as well as the pallium - a narrow stole of white wool embroidered with six black silk crosses - which symbolizes his pastoral authority.

Italian civil protection officials estimate that about 100,000 people from Benedict's native Germany will flock to Rome. Italy will provide German-speaking volunteers from Italy's bilingual Alpine regions to help them.

On Monday, Benedict is scheduled to hold talks with Chrisostomos. Healing the nearly 1,000-year-old rift between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity was a major goal of the late pope.

On Friday, the pope personally greeted the most powerful prelates in the church in a ceremony that illuminated two central elements of the new papacy: his vast Vatican experience and his efforts to cement bonds with his beloved predecessor, John Paul II.