In the Vatican, the days after the election of a pope are known as the "days of surprise" as the outline of a new papacy begins to take shape.
By the time Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio stepped out onto the balcony of St Peters on 13 March, 2013, Rome had already undergone plenty of "days of surprise".
The resignation of Pope Benedict weeks earlier – the first time a pope had stepped aside in over six centuries - sent shockwaves across the world.
It is a measure of the unusual situation in which Pope Francis found himself that his arrival on the balcony was delayed as he tried to contact his predecessor to tell him that he had been elected.
The papacy and legacy of Pope Francis
Unsurprisingly Pope Benedict, sitting in the papal summer residence of Castelgandolfo watching events unfold on the television, declined to answer the phone as he waited to see who would walk onto the balcony to take up the mantle he had put down in a shock resignation weeks earlier.
It is perhaps a testament to both popes that they made such an unprecedented and remarkable situation work, navigating a situation that most Vatican watchers considered at best awkward and at worst utterly unworkable.
It also served as an early indicator of how the new pope would operate on his own terms.
Michael Kelly, Director of Public Affairs for the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need, said that it encapsulated the "strong sense of himself" that Cardinal Bergoglio brought to the papacy.
Far from seeing Pope Benedict living in close proximity in the Vatican as an obstacle, Mr Kelly said Pope Francis saw it as a tool in a sense, developing a close and warm friendship with his predecessor.
Elise Ann Allen, Senior Correspondent for Crux in Rome covering the Vatican and the global Church, agrees.
Francis worked hard to show how appreciative he was of Pope Bendict's presence, Ms Allen said, often asking his advice and counsel, while also finding his own way in a new and demanding role where he and Benedict might not always have agreed.
Differing ideological approaches in the Papacy are not unusual, Ms Allen said.
"If you get five popes in a room, you'll probably have six different approaches on how to do something," she added, though it wasn’t without its challenges.
The narrative, particularly in the early days, that it would be one pope versus the other was something both found difficult, Ms Allen adds, as well as the view that the two men - who have different ideological approaches - fell into two divides.
Those differences became obvious very early in Pope Francis’s tenure as he eschewed living in the papal apartments, choosing instead to make his home in the more informal and accessible Casa Santa Marta.
And he made known the social causes close to his heart, from visiting migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa to advocating on climate change, stamping his own priorities on the role he had taken on.
Those changes made many liberal Catholics think that major change was on the way, a fear for more conservative members of the faith.
But, Mr Kelly suggests, part of the challenge Pope Francis faced was not just that which his predecessors had – that you can’t please everyone – but also that Pope Francis's communication style often made people believe that discussion around controversial or difficult topics meant change was on the way when in fact it wasn’t.
"I think if you look back at his papacy, a lot of people will express frustration at the pace of change," Mr Kelly said.
The pope's conversational style could leave people confused about what he really intended, as in when he talked about getting more women more involved in the Church.
Reformers instantly thought this was "wonderful", Mr Kelly said, and that the pope was opening the Church to the prospect of women priests.
But the next interview would see him ruling out the prospect of female ordinations.
That approach, Mr Kelly said, went to the synodal approach which Pope Francis took on a range of issues, wanting to open discussion up across the Church, but not necessarily in a bid to immediately change doctrine.
It left Francis caught between those who wanted him to move faster on reforms and those who did not want him to move at all.
As Ms Allen said: "The only predictable thing about Pope Francis is that he was often unpredictable."
"He had his own way of doing things", and as a result, she adds "he didn’t fit comfortably into the mould of either liberal or conservative".
On issues like clerical abuse, there was criticism of the pope’s response which some characterised as being slow and of lacking transparency.
Mr Kelly said that he thinks Pope Francis "was slow to understand the nature of the cover-up, to understand the institutional forces that were at play. I think there was a certain cultural aspect to that.
"I think he was coming with a certain prejudice, viewing clerical abuse as something that's part of Western culture and not perhaps part of the culture that he himself was from in Latin America."
These are issues which not only proved difficult for Pope Francis but that are likely to prove as difficult for his successor, who will be chosen in the weeks ahead.
