ROME (OSV News) – 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.
In November 2014, the news broke that showers for the homeless would be built under the sweeping white colonnade of St. Peter’s Square — the decision following a request by the pope that showers for the poor be built in 10 Roman parishes. Over the years, an outpatient clinic for the poor was built in that same spot, in the touristy center of the Vatican.
“Around 150 people are treated there by doctors daily. Those doctors all work as volunteers, eight to 10 doctors every day — dentists, gynecologists, podiatrists, often professors of medicine! And you know what they tell me — that this is more important to put in their resume than the famous Gemelli clinic,” Cardinal Krajewski said in November 2024 of the privilege the doctors feel to serve the poor in the name of the pope.
“I remember that in one of the first public appointments with the press, Pope Francis said how he would like a poor church, which is poor and for the poor,” Massimiliano Signifredi, Community of Sant’Egidio’s coordinator of services for the homeless, told OSV News.
Sant’Egidio, founded in 1968 by the young Andrea Riccardi, now an esteemed professor of history, intellectual and successful negotiator of peace agreements, over the years has become a network of communities that tend to the poor, including migrants, and advocate for peace in more than 70 countries around the world.
For Francis, Sant’Egidio was a natural ally.
“The Holy Father got to know St. Egidio in the villas miseria, Spanish for shanty towns, in Buenos Aires, and he met many times with our community,” Signifredi stressed.
In 2016, when the pope unexpectedly took Syrian families with him to Rome on a papal plane from the Greek Lesbos island, Sant’Egidio was facilitating the visit and took care of the families in their new life journey.
A year later, Francis announced the first World Day of the Poor.
“The poor are not a problem: They are a resource from which to draw as we strive to accept and practice in our lives the essence of the Gospel,” Francis wrote in the message for the first observance Nov. 19, 2017. He asked the world to celebrate World Day of the Poor on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time — usually the third Sunday of November.
“This Sunday, if there are poor people where we live who seek protection and assistance, let us draw close to them: it will be a favourable moment to encounter the God we seek,” the pope said, adding, “Let us never forget that, for Christ’s disciples, poverty is above all a call to follow Jesus in his own poverty.”
The pope practiced what he preached – every year making the Vatican press corps happy with unusual pictures of the pontiff dining with thousands of the poor, joking with children from disadvantaged families and sincerely laughing with migrants from all corners of the globe.
In 2019, another milestone of the revolution hit. The pope had an empty Roman palace to allocate.
“It is a beautiful building that overlooks the colonnade at St. Peter’s Square. You can see the dome perfectly,” Signifredi said, adding it could easily become a neat Vatican curial office or a five-star hotel, “maybe even more given the location.”
“Do you know how much money he could make if he turned this place into a hotel?” Silvano, a homeless man from Romania, asked OSV News in March 2023 in the premises of Palazzo Migliori. “Millions! But instead he renovated it and gave this place to us, to the poor.”
After extensive renovation carried out under the supervision of Cardinal Krajewski, and which left historical frescoes on the walls, Palazzo Migliori was opened in November 2019 in time for the third World Day of the Poor.
“It is not only a roof on top of their heads, or a bed with a bedside table, but it is the chance to start a new life,” Signifredi said.
There, in Palazzo Migliori, alms given to the homeless are transformed into “real change,” he said.
“When you give alms, you touch someone’s hand. In Palazzo Migliori, the Lord touches the hand of the poor, and with that — he touches their heart. He touches their life so that their life changes,” Signifredi explained.
“It’s not a shelter, it’s home,” added Silvano, who only gave his first name.
The biggest change for the homeless is the fact that after stepping through the threshold of the palazzo, they regain their dignity.
“The first thing you need to do with a homeless man is to accept him, talk to him,” Cardinal Krajewski said.
That is why when the cardinal was told in the spring of 2023 that “a homeless man without a face” lives in the Aventino area, he rushed to see him.
Miroslav, a Slovak man, had his face covered with cloth since his face was disfigured by cancer. “We took him to Palazzo Migliori and took care of him for two months,” Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News in September 2023.
“He was blind as the disease took his eyes, he didn’t have a nose, but for the last two months of his life he was surrounded by friends. Slovak bishops were paying visits to him. He had constant care and attention,” Cardinal Krajewski recalled.
“He would have his window open and would listen to Wednesday audiences of the Holy Father. And every time someone would come he just said, ‘Thank you.’ He never cursed his fate, did not hold a grudge against the doctors, because he was not surrounded by procedures, but people,” Cardinal Krajewski said.
The Polish cardinal celebrated Miroslav’s funeral in Rome’s St. Monica Church on Sept. 16, 2023. He was buried in the Prima Porta cemetery in Rome.
“At the beginning tending to people like Miroslav seems difficult, but only going against the current you will see that this is precisely being in the center of the Gospel,” he said.
“Over 20 centuries of Christian history reveal that the 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,” Signifredi added, underlining Francis’ legacy that he hopes will last for decades and centuries to come.
Miroslav became a symbol of dozens of homeless men, whose funerals were celebrated by Cardinal Krajewski and other cardinals in multiple Roman churches — a goodbye on behalf of the Holy Father.
Community of Sant’Egidio volunteers and collaborators filled the churches on those occasions “dressed in their best clothes, like they were saying goodbye to their own family members,” Cardinal Krajewski emphasized.
“I think Pope Francis has renewed a tradition of the church that has been there since the beginning, and with great human wisdom he has led the church to rediscover the treasure – that is – the poor,” Signifredi told OSV News.
For Signifredi, Pope Francis has shown that “the poor are not a social category, but they are faces. They are hands to be held, to be accompanied. He showed this very concretely when on many occasions he just hung out with them.”
For some, this approach was “uncomfortable,” Cardinal Krajewski said of the many critics of the showers, clinics and shelters surrounding St. Peter’s.
“Jesus loved people so much he went to the cross for them. And why did people crucify Jesus? Because they did not understand him. The fact that someone did not understand Pope Francis does not mean we shouldn’t have done on his behalf what was done,” the Polish prelate emphasized in September 2023.
“The most beautiful thing in life is to become a purpose for another human being.”