After a papal Mass in Casa Santa Marta almost a year ago, a distressed businessman approached Pope Francis. Tears were in his eyes. “I have to make a declaration of bankruptcy,” he explained to the Pope. “It would mean firing 60 workers, and I do not want to, because I feel like I’m firing myself.” 

Francis told this story last Saturday during a discussion at a steel factory in Genoa, in the north west of Italy, as an example of a “good” business owner. The man who approached him had “fought and prayed” for his workers, the Pope said; he saw them as his family and was only laying them off as a last resort.