VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI confirmed Cardinal Angelo Sodano in the Vatican's No. 2 post today and kept all other top officials, avoiding any immediate shakeup in the late John Paul II's administration.

It was a sign that the new pope, a doctrinal hard-liner, wants to show continuity with the popular John Paul.

Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, is 77, already two years past the normal retirement age for Vatican officials. The new pope is 78.

The confirmation of Sodano came a day after Benedict gave his first Mass at the Vatican as pope, pledging to keep reaching out to other religions and leaving no doubt that he senses the large shadow of his predecessor.

"I seem to feel his strong hand holding mine, I feel I can see his smiling eyes and hear his words, at this moment particularly directed at me: 'Be not afraid,'" said Benedict, who until Tuesday was simply Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

While signaling that he wants to tread in John Paul's ideological footsteps, the 78-year-old pope is a contrast in style to his predecessor, who was 20 years younger when he became pontiff and kept up a grueling global travel schedule even as his health ebbed.

John Paul II, who died April 2, acted, played soccer, went canoeing in mountain streams as a young man in Poland. Benedict is mostly an indoor man, though he is a big walker because of his youth in the Bavarian Alps. He finds relaxation in classical music and likes to play the piano, not take to the stage.

But Benedict took his cue from John Paul when he pledged Wednesday to work for unity among Christians and to seek "an open and sincere dialogue" with other faiths.

He also stressed he would draw on the work of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meeting that modernized the church, an issue important to liberals who are wary of Benedict from his time as the powerful enforcer of church doctrine.

Benedict will be fighting that reputation close to home as he tackles one of the biggest challenges: a Europe of empty churches and growing secularism.

And as the world's 1.1 billion Catholics got first hints of where the papacy is headed, followers of other religions weighed the future of interfaith relations. By and large, reactions were hopeful and expectant - an indication of the new standards in reaching out that John Paul set during his 26-year papacy.

"I think he has been very open, so I have no worries about the ecumenical route," said British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. "It will continue. No doubt at all."

But the new pope has been one of the most forceful Vatican voices for Catholic missionary work and other forms of evangelization. He was the intellectual force behind the 2000 document "Dominus Iesus," which outlined the Catholic Church as an exclusive road to salvation and angered Protestants, Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians.

In Israel, admiration for John Paul's tireless efforts to promote Jewish-Catholic reconciliation mixed with unease about Benedict's time in the Hitler Youth as a teenager.

Benedict has written openly about his service, which was compulsory under the Nazi regime. He also was drafted into a German anti-aircraft unit during World War II, though he says he never fired a shot.

"Israel can certainly coexist with him," Oded Ben-Hor, Israel's ambassador to the Vatican, said of the new pope. "But the real test will come over the course of time."

Benedict inherits sometimes testy relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has accused Catholics of poaching Orthodox believers. John Paul, the first Slavic pope, saw a visit to Russia as a way to promote greater Christian unity a millennium after the east-west schism, but he never was able to arrange the trip.

"We very much hope that under the new pope those problems will be solved," said Igor Vyzhanov, an Orthodox church spokesman.