ROME — In the last years of his papacy, the world saw the more serious, concerned and suffering face of Pope Francis. But with one group he was always beaming, always smiling and always cheerful: the poor.
“Pope Francis put the poor in the center of his papacy because this meant precisely being in the center of the Gospel,” Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, kept repeating throughout the pontificate when asked about initiative after initiative for the Roman homeless and disadvantaged.
For Francis, taking care of those in need meant turning the Vatican upside down. The poor were regularly welcomed inside Casa Santa Marta, where the pope lived, and the Swiss Guards were saluting them as they made their way to the Elemosineria Apostolica — the Apostolic Almsgiving office — for lunch with Cardinal Krajewski. Francis made it perfectly clear — they’re one of us, and they deserve the Vatican to be their home.
The revolution was easy to predict as the cardinal who became Pope Francis was a regular guest in the slums of Buenos Aires and a priest who wouldn’t replace his glasses until they were falling apart. For the Vatican however, the scale of the revolution was shocking.
“The task of the Apostolic Almsgiving is to empty the account for the charity of the Holy Father for the poor, according to the logic of the Gospel,” reads the main banner on the website for Cardinal Krajewski’s office.
Five months into Francis’ papacy, in August 2013, the Polish prelate was picked for the job of distributing charity funds of the Vatican — an appointment that started a whirlwind of initiatives.
“The Holy Father told me to sell my desk,” Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News in November 2023. “You won’t need it,” he recalled, pointing to the pope’s primary directive — to go out and be there where the poor need you.
"It’s not a shelter, it's home," Silvano, a homeless man from Romania told OSV News in March 2023. For the Polish cardinal and Community of Sant'Egidio with whom the pope worked the closest in his charity efforts, Pope Francis reminded the church that to help the poor is to see Jesus in every face.
"Full adherence to the Gospel has gone along with love for the poor. When the Church turned away from the poor, it also lost the Gospel," Massimiliano Signifredi of Sant'Egidio stressed.
Pope Francis wanted the faithful to see the poor as a resource, not a problem. Through his actions, Pope Francis has reminded the Church that loving the poor is essential to living the Gospel, a legacy Signifredi hopes will continue for generations.
