Five things we learned from Pope Francis’ candid and historic Big Issue interview

Pope Francis passed away on Easter Monday, 21 April, aged 88.

The election of the Argentinian pontiff marked many firsts for the Catholic Church. He was the first Jesuit to hold the position, the first Latin American, and the first Pope from outside Europe in more than 1,000 years.  

But despite this bevy of milestones, Pope Francis may be best remembered for his commitment to social and economic justice.

In his first Easter address, Francis took aim at capitalism as “greed looking for easy gain”, slamming “the iniquitous exploitation of natural resources”.  He washed the feet of young prisoners, called for environmental justice and said that Catholicism should be “a poor church for the poor”.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the late Pope – who very rarely granted interviews – in 2015 agreed to sit down with Big Issue, through our street-paper network colleagues from the Netherlands.

Here are five things the progressive pontiff told us.

• Pope Francis: “I want a world without poverty. We need to fight for that”

The Pope was touched by early experiences of inequality

Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on 17 December 1936 in the Flores district of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He was the son of Italian immigrants – an accountant and a housewife – who had fled when Benito Mussolini came to power.

Young Jorge was aware of acute social injustice from a young age. Asked about his “personal commitment to the poor”, he told Big Issue:

“A woman who worked in our home three times a week to help my mother comes to mind. She helped with the laundry, for example. She had two children. They were Italian and had survived the war; they were very poor but they were very good people.

“And I have never forgotten that woman. Her poverty struck me. We were not rich. Normally we made it to the end of the month but not much more. We didn’t own a car, we didn’t go on vacations or things like that. But she often needed even the most basic items. They didn’t have enough, and so my mother gave her things.

“I found her again when I was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, and she was already 90. I was able to assist her until her death at the age of 93. One day, she gave me a medal of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which I still carry with me every day. This medal – which is also a memento – is very good for me. With this, every day I think of her, and of how she suffered from poverty. And I think of all the others who have suffered. I wear it, and I use it to pray.”

The Pope believed in the universal right to a home

Pope Francis was an advocate for homeless people, calling them the “nobles of the street.” He believed that everyone has the right to a home, a belief drawn from his Catholicism.

“Jesus came into our world without a home, and he chose poverty. Then, the church seeks to embrace us all, and says that it is a right to have a roof over your head,” he told us.

“Popular movements work toward the three Spanish Ts: trabajo [work], techo [roof] and tierra [land]. The church teaches that every person has the right to these three Ts.”

In 2016, the Pope established the World Day of the Poor, and converted a 19th Century Palazzo next to the Vatican into a homeless shelter.  

Pope Francis shunned the official papal apartments in favour of humbler lodgings

Pope Francis gave up the luxury penthouse occupied by his predecessors at the Apostolic Palace, and shunned the traditional papal summer retreat. He preferred to live in the Vatican’s Domus Sanctae Marthae (House of Saint Martha) guesthouse.

“Two days after having been elected Pope, I went to take possession of the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace. It is not a luxurious apartment. But it is wide, and large… After having seen the apartment, it seemed to me to be a bit like an upside down funnel, so large but with only one small door. That means being isolated. I thought to myself: I can’t live here, simply for mental health reasons. It would not be good for me,” he told Big Issue.

“At the beginning, it seemed a bit strange but I asked to stay here, at the Domus Sanctae Marthae. And this is good for me because I feel free here. I eat in the dining hall where all the guests eat. And when I am early, I eat with the staff. I meet people, I greet them, and this makes the golden cage a bit less of a cage. But I miss the street.

As a child, Pope Francis never dreamed of joining the church

Asked if he dreamed of the papacy, Francis gave a resounding ‘No’.

“But I will tell you a secret,” he continued. “When I was little, there weren’t many shops that sold things. What we had was a market, where there was the butcher, the greengrocer, etc. I went with my mother and my grandmother to do the shopping. Once, when I was quite little, about four, someone asked me: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And I answered: ‘A butcher!’”

Pope Francis wanted a ‘world without poverty’

Keir Starmer has paid tribute to Pope Francis as a ‘Pope for the poor’. In 2015, the pontiff told Big Issue that he believed in a “world without poverty” – but that it wouldn’t come easy.

“I want a world without poverty. We need to fight for that. But I am a believer, and I know that sin is always within us. And there is always human greed, the lack of solidarity, the selfishness which creates poverty. That is why it is difficult for me to imagine a world without poverty. If you think of the children exploited for slave labour or of children exploited for sexual abuse. And another form of exploitation: killing children to remove their organs, organ trafficking. Killing children for their organs is greed.

“That is why I don’t know whether we will ever have a world without poverty because there is always sin, and it leads to selfishness. But we must always fight… always.”

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