Vatican City ? He kissed babies, blessed people in wheelchairs and joked that he felt like a guillotine was falling on him when he realized that he might be elected pope.

He showed he had a sense of humor and knew how to work a crowd — traits the public rarely saw during his quarter-century as the stern German guardian of the church’s conservative doctrine.

Pope Benedict XVI’s playfulness Monday was apparent during an audience with German pilgrims who had flocked to his installation Mass a day earlier. At first, he apologized for being late, saying a meeting with religious leaders had run over time.

“The Germans are used to punctuality,” he joked. “I’m already Italianized.”

And then he shed some light for the first time on what he said was going on in his mind in the hours before he was elected leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.

“As the trend in the ballots slowly made me realize that — in a manner of speaking the guillotine would fall on me — I started to feel quite dizzy,” Benedict told his countrymen in his native German, smiling and chuckling. “I thought that I had done my life’s work and could now hope to live out my days in peace.

“I told the Lord with deep conviction, ‘Don’t do this to me. You have younger and better (candidates) who could take up this great task with a totally different energy and with different strength.”‘

“Evidently, this time he didn’t listen to me,” Benedict joked.

“So in the end, all I could do say was yes. I am trusting in God, and I am trusting in you, dear friends.”

During a separate meeting Monday with leaders and representatives of non-Catholic religions, Benedict pledged to “continue building bridges of friendship.” For the first time, he singled out Muslims for a greeting.

Addressed “dear friends from different religious traditions,” the pope said, “I offer warm and affectionate greetings to you and to all those who belong to the religions that you represent.

“I am particularly grateful for the presence in our midst of members of the Muslim community.”