“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart toward everyone,” said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, in his homily during the pope’s funeral on Saturday.
“His gestures and exhortations in favor of refugees and displaced persons are countless. His insistence on working on behalf of the poor was constant,” Re said.
Francis “strongly supported” transforming the Vatican post office into a free medical clinic for the homeless and undocumented migrants, where it averages 100 visits a day, says The New York Times. Showers for the homeless were set up near the clinic, along with tents distributed by an office of papal charities.
In 2019, Francis blessed a four-story Vatican property behind St. Peter’s Basilica as he opened a shelter that provides housing for about 50 people, says the Times. The pope often ate with the homeless and invited them to annual concerts at the Vatican.
The pope “gave immense emphasis to aid to the poor, not just the poor in Rome, but the poor around the world,” says Carlo Santoro of the Sant’Egidio Community, a Rome-based charity that runs the building, citing trips by a cardinal to take supplies to Ukraine. The most recent trip was earlier this month.
The pope also was outspoken about prison conditions, and one of his final public outings, four days before his death, was to visit inmates at Rome’s Regina Coeli prison.
I hope you have a second to click on this photo of the joy of the inmates as the pope greeted them.
The last people to bid farewell to the pope after the funeral mass at St. Peter’s and just before his burial on Saturday were a group of poor, homeless, migrant, transgender, and incarcerated people, each of them holding a white rose. The idea was that all the pope’s favorite people would be accompanying him in his final journey, says Vatican News.