The guests honored at Pope Francis’s funeral: the most vulnerable in Rome

Before Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday, tens of thousands of dignitaries, pilgrims and tourists will have had the opportunity to align and present their respects.

But in the moments before your coffin is buried in a simple grave in the Basilica of Santa María Maggiore in Rome, it will be a group of people living in poverty that will have the final opportunity to honor it.

The Vatican says that it is an indication of the “privileged place” that people living in poverty have in the heart of God, and in Francisco, who passed their pontification to defend the marginalized.

“Everyone miss him,” said Ciobanu Catalin Nelu, 49, who slept under bridges before receiving shelter in a refuge a few steps from the Vatican.

“Whether you are Arabic, Romanian or Muslim … he loved everyone, he helped them.”

A shelter in the shadows of the Vatican

The shelter, Palazzo Migliiori, is located on the other side of the iconic columns that border the Plaza de San Pedro.

On Wednesday afternoon, while the crowds crowded the area with the hope of going through the Pope’s coffin, a much smaller group met in front of the shelter, waiting for the night to open.

When he did, a few dozen appeared when transporting backpacks and bags full of laundry. Inside, they were given a bed, an abundant meal and a warm conversation.

In 2019, Pope Francis BEST PALAZZO TRIPwhich literally translates as a “palace of the best”, in a home for some of the most vulnerable in the city.

On Monday, after the Pope died, Nelu, originally from Romania, said he looked out the window from his shared room to the Plaza de San Pedro for hours.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Nelu said. “Everyone miss him.”

Pope Francis has been repeatedly called Pope for people, who sent some of the most vulnerable of society a priority of his pontificate. He visited people living in poverty, advocated migrants and met with homosexual and transgender activists.

He challenged world leaders, and some saw it as a constant voice of compassion in a changing political environment.

“The world is always sometimes more selfish,” said Carlo Santoro, director of the refuge led by the community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic association that directs several charity projects connected to the Vatican.

“The poor are aware that Pope Francis defends them … does not abandon them, even when there are obstacles or political.”

Papal visit

In the city of Rome, more than 22,000 people are experiencing the lack of housing, according to Recent data Collected by the National Statistics Institute, and it is common to see people accustomed in cardboard and sleeping bags around the Plaza de San Pedro and under the blankets of buildings and churches.

When Palazzo Migliiori, who had been the headquarters of a religious order of Calasanziane, female, he was vacant in 2019, Santoro said that many people pushed to turn the building into a hotel.

“(Pope Francis) said yes, it would be a hotel, but not for the rich, for the poor,” said Santoro.

“Because the poor deserve places like this.”

After the shelter opened, Pope Francis visited and sat down with the residents during dinner.

On Wednesday night, when the 45 people who stayed there ate a meal of pasta, chicken and salad, could listen to the buzz of the crowd in the Plaza de San Pedro that had come out to cry.

Pope photos and paintings hang on the walls of the shelter.

While Francis only visited the shelter once, Santoro said that residents, volunteers and staff felt a connection with him.

On March 27, 2020, during the height of the Covid Pandemia, the Pope delivered A blessing From the Plaza de San Pedro soaked with rain and empty. Later, the Pope wrote about the moment in his memoirs, saying that he thought of all vulnerable people, including those of the “stripes of society” and “people living in the street.”

At that time, from the terrace of the shelter with views of the Vatican, Santoro says they were praying with him.

Pope’s reach

Santoro points out one of Francis’s last acts as his unwavering commitment to those often on the margins of society.

Holy Thursday, just before Easter, Visited one of the most overpopulated prisons in Italy and met 70 inmates. Normally, to mark the day, Francis washed the feet of the prisoners, including those of women and Muslims, in an act to imitate the washing of Christ of the feet of his disciples before he died.

This year, the fragile health of the Pope left him unable to wash his 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 that he was praying for their families.

Santoro, who had met Francis several times, said that the Pope had a feeling of disinterest and the determination to try to open people’s minds to suffering in the world around them.

Since the Palazzo Migliiori shelter opened almost five years ago, more than 100 of those who stayed there have moved to temporary homes.

Fabrizio Salvati, 69, has arrived at Palazzo every night during the last three years, and says he hopes to move forward soon, but admits that he has some problems.

He began to face the lack of housing after falling into a depression that left him sleeping at a railway station in Rome before moving to the shelter.

Salvati, who uses a spiral thread of pearls under a blue sweatshirt, smiles while getting on his penne plate, and describes how he met the Pope during a lunch in 2022, and thanks him.

“The previous potatoes have always done something for the poor … It is a mission for the church,” said Salvati.

“But this Pope has gone further, has gone much further.”

He says it was the Pope who pushed the Holy See, the central government body of the Roman Catholic Church and the state of the city of the Vatican, to implement a newsletter that gives people like Salvati a stronger voice.

Now he has found some work writing for the newspaper and delivering copies in the Plaza de San Pedro.

“This newspaper for me in my life … He returned a role,” he said. “That is the most important thing for me.

Global defender

While the Pope advocated continuously for people living in poverty, he was also a defense of migrants and called what he saw as a lack of empathy.

In 2016, he traveled to Greek Lesbos Island, which was overwhelmed by 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 reap in Rome.

That same year, He criticized The president of the United States president, Donald Trump, to build a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico, saying that “a person who only thinks of building walls, wherever they are and not build bridges, is not Christian.”

In your final direction in Easter SundayThat he was delivered by one of his assistants of a Vatican balcony, the Pope said he was praying for those in conflict areas, even in Ukraine and in Gaza, and commented “how much contempt he sometimes agitates towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and the migrants.”

Back in the Palazzo Migliori, Santoro, who has been working with people living in poverty in Rome, says the Pope was really connected to them.

Outside the shelter, a man who walked with a cane carried a transparent plastic bag full of belongings, including a postcard of Pope Francis.

“Long lives in the Pope,” he shouted as he wandered.