Pope avoided papal apartments to preserve his ‘mental health’

Pope Francis said he had not wanted to become the pontiff and that he had decided against moving into the luxurious papal apartments in order to preserve his mental health.

Meeting thousands of children from Jesuit schools across Italy and Albania, he held a question-and-answer session in which one girl, Teresa, asked him if he had wanted to become the leader of the world’s 1.2bn Catholics.

“Anyone who wants to be pope doesn’t care much for themselves, God doesn’t bless them. I didn’t want to be pope,” he said.

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, previously said he had prayed to God not to be elected pope but that “evidently this time he didn’t listen to me”.

Another girl, Caterina, asked Francis why he had refused to move into the papal apartments, choosing to live instead in a simple hotel-like Vatican residence.

“It’s not just a question of riches but also a personality issue,” he said. “I need to live among people and if I lived on my own, perhaps a little isolated, it wouldn’t do me good.

“It would be bad and boring,” he said, adding that he had made the decision for “psychiatric reasons”.

The former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, who has set a humble tone for the papacy since his elevation in March, also said it was important to lead a simpler life.

“These days, there is a lot of poverty in the world and that’s a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone,” he said.