Performative poverty of the humble abode of Pope Francis became ultra-expensive

Santa Marta is too expensive. Pope Leo returns to the Apostolic Palace

The first steps of Leo XIV at the helm of the Church are largely satisfying the expectations of the cardinals who elected him. The eminent were looking for a good shepherd, but even more they were confident that the new pontiff could rebalance that form of government that under the pontificate of Bergoglio had taken on authoritarian tendencies and destabilized the clergy and faithful with numerous acts considered far too daring. Leo first of all re-established - with kindness but with firmness - the dignity due to the Supreme Pontiff with small but significant gestures. The new Pope willingly accepts the hand kiss as a form of respect and reverence but woe betide anyone who asks him for a selfie, a symbol of a pop decadence to which Bergoglio had become largely accustomed. Even his external appearance has returned to that which befits the successor of Peter, with more appropriate and formal clothing: the Pope wears the choir dress (rochet and red mozzetta over the cassock) on formal occasions and wears the Fisherman's ring he received last Sunday every day. Furthermore, since the evening of his election, Leo has not slept in Santa Marta, preferring to temporarily stay in the house he inhabited as a cardinal in Palazzo Sant'Uffizio.

The Pope broke the seals of the papal apartment on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace by viewing the rooms where all his predecessors lived from 1870 to 2013 and where he intends to settle as soon as the necessary renovation work has been carried out. During his twelve years of stay in Santa Marta, Francis has first of all caused several problems of public order and security but also economic ones. The famous "fifty square meters" in which Bergoglio stayed in the hotel intended for the cardinals in the Conclave have gradually become numerous rooms until they occupied the entire second floor. A kitchen, a reception room, a private chapel and several rooms for the closest collaborators have been prepared in recent years, making the spaces of Santa Marta used by the pontiff much larger than the historic papal apartment. All this has entailed numerous works but above all maintenance, not to mention the doubling of security that in any case must be guaranteed at the Apostolic Palace, making it necessary to hire new gendarmerie agents and enlist numerous more Swiss guards than in the past. The costs of the operation, which is anything but pauperistic, have risen over the years, reaching the hyperbolic figure of almost two hundred thousand euros a month for the management of Santa Marta in the last period of Francis' reign. Leo has therefore decided to carry out his function with dignity and wisdom: he will live where the Popes have always stayed and Santa Marta will return to its ordinary use.

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