Pope Francis: Not whether to serve the poor but how

Francis Davis

01 July 2025, The Tablet

From the slums of Buenos Aires to the halls of the Vatican, Pope Francis’s life and papacy were shaped by a deep commitment to justice, solidarity, and the poor. For him, the preferential option for the poor was not an option but a gospel imperative

Remembering visiting Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1992, the year that Jose Bergoglio first became a bishop in that city, three things stand out in my memory:

First, a profoundly politicised context. I encountered parishes that spread out from presbytery bases into wealthy apartments but also large slums, the villa miseria. Here young priests who hosted me debated not whether the Church should have an ‘option for the poor’ but only ‘what form the option for the poor should take’?

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