Before Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday, tens of thousands of dignitaries, pilgrims and tourists will have had the chance to line up and pay their respects.
But in the moments before his casket is interred in a simple tomb at the Santa Maria Maggiore basilica in Rome, it will be a group of people living in poverty who will have the final chance to honour him.
The Vatican says it’s an indication of the “privileged place” that people living in poverty have in God’s heart, and in Francis’s, who spent his pontificate advocating for the marginalized.
“Everybody misses him,” said Ciobanu Catalin Nelu, 49, who was sleeping under bridges before being given refuge at a shelter just steps from the Vatican.
“Whether you are Arab, Romanian, or Muslim … he loved everybody, he helped them.”
A shelter in the shadows of the Vatican
The shelter, Palazzo Migliori, lies on the other side of the iconic columns bordering St. Peter’s Square.
In the early evening on Wednesday, as crowds thronged the area hoping for a chance to pass by the Pope’s casket, a much smaller group gathered in front of the shelter, waiting for it to open for the night.
When it did, a few dozen filed in carrying backpacks and bags full of laundry. Inside, they were given a bed, a hearty meal and warm conversation.
In 2019, Pope Francis turned the Palazzo Migliori, which literally translates to “Palace of the Best,” into a home for some of the city’s most vulnerable.
On Monday, after the Pope died, Nelu, who is originally from Romania, said he stared out the window from his shared room toward St. Peter’s Square for hours.
“I couldn’t sleep” Nelu said. “Everybody misses him.”
Pope Francis has been repeatedly called a pope for the people, who made reaching out to some of society’s most vulnerable a priority of his pontificate. He visited people living in poverty, advocated for migrants and met with gay and transgender activists.
He challenged world leaders, and some saw him as a steady voice of compassion in a shifting political environment.
“The world is always sometimes more selfish,” said Carlo Santoro, the director of the shelter that is run by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic association that runs several charitable projects connected to the Vatican.
“The poor are aware that Pope Francis defends them … doesn’t abandon them, even when there are obstacles or politics.”
Papal visit
In the city of Rome, more than 22,000 people are experiencing homelessness, according to recent data collected by the National Institute of Statistics, and it’s common to see people lying on cardboard and in sleeping bags around St. Peter’s Square and under the overhangs of buildings and churches.
When the Palazzo Migliori, which had been a headquarters for an all-female Calasanziane religious order, became vacant in 2019, Santoro said there was a push by many people to turn the building into a hotel.
“[Pope Francis] said yes, it would be a hotel, but not for the rich — for the poor,” Santoro said.
“Because the poor deserve places like this.”
After the shelter opened, Pope Francis visited and sat down with residents over dinner.
On Wednesday night, as the 45 people staying there ate a meal of pasta, chicken and salad, they could hear the buzzing sound of the crowd in St. Peter’s square that had come out to mourn him.
On the shelter’s walls hang photos and paintings of the Pope.
While Francis only visited the shelter once, Santoro said the residents, volunteers and staff felt a connection to him.
On March 27, 2020, during the height of lockdowns in the COVID pandemic, the Pope delivered a blessing from the rain-soaked and empty St. Peter’s Square. The Pope later wrote about the moment in his memoir, saying that he thought about all of the vulnerable people including those on the “fringes of society” and “people living on the street.”
Back then, from the shelter’s terrace overlooking the Vatican, Santoro says they were praying right along with him.
Pope’s outreach
Santoro points to one of Francis’s last acts as his unwavering commitment to those often on the margins of society.
On Holy Thursday, just before Easter, he visited one of Italy’s most overcrowded prisons and met with 70 inmates. Normally, to mark the day, Francis would wash the feet of prisoners, including those of women and Muslims, in an act to imitate Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet before he died.
This year, the Pope’s frail health left him unable to wash the feet, so instead, while sitting in his wheelchair, he met with the inmates for 30 minutes. Vatican media reported that he said he wanted to feel close to them, and was praying for their families.
Santoro, who had met Francis a number of times, said the Pope had a sense of selflessness, and a determination to try to open people’s minds to the suffering in the world around them.
Since the Palazzo Migliori shelter opened nearly five years ago, more than 100 of those staying there have been moved into temporary housing.
Fabrizio Salvati, 69, has arrived at the palazzo every night for the past three years, and says he hopes to be able to move on soon, too, but admits he has some troubles.
He started facing homelessness after falling into a depression that left him sleeping at a railway station in Rome before moving to the shelter.
Salvati, who wears a coiled strand of pearls underneath a blue sweatshirt, smiles as he tucks into his plate of penne, and describes how he met the Pope over a lunch in 2022, and thanked him.
“The previous popes have always done something for the poor … it’s a mission for the church,” Salvati said.
“But this Pope has gone beyond, has gone far, far beyond.”
He says it was the Pope who pushed the the Holy See, the central governing body of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican City state, to roll out a newsletter giving people like Salvati a louder voice.
He has now found some work writing for the paper and handing out copies in St. Peter’s Square.
“This newspaper for me in my life … it gave me back a role,” he said. “That is the most important thing to me.
Global advocate
While the Pope continually advocated for people living in poverty, he was also a defender of migrants and called out what he saw as a lack of empathy.
In 2016, he travelled to the Greek island of Lesbos, which was overwhelmed with refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria and other conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. He brought back three Muslim families aboard the papal plane to resettle in Rome.
That same year, he criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that “a person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
In his final address on Easter Sunday, which was delivered by one of his aides from a Vatican balcony, the Pope said he was praying for those in conflict zones, including in Ukraine and in Gaza, and he remarked about “how much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants.”
Back at the Palazzo Migliori, Santoro, who has been working with people living in poverty in Rome for decades, says the Pope was truly connected with them.
Outside the shelter, one man walking with a cane carried a transparent plastic bag filled with belongings, including a postcard of Pope Francis.
“Long live the Pope,” he shouted as he wandered away.
