Pope celebrates birthday with four homeless men (and one cute dog)
By Daniel Burke
(CNN) – Pope Francis marked his 77th birthday on Tuesday by welcoming four homeless men to a Mass and a meal at the Vatican, according to Catholic officials.
The Pope wanted a "family" environment, with just a few top aides, the staff of Casa Santa Marta – the Vatican guesthouse – and the homeless men, one of whom brought his dog, the Vatican said.
Afterward, the group sang "Happy Birthday" to Francis, and he invited everyone to eat breakfast with him at the hotel's dining room, according to the Vatican.
The homeless men were brought by the Pope's aide in charge of charity, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, who has been taking Francis' concern for the poor directly to the streets of Rome.
The Vatican's sharing of the Pope's birthday plans is sure to burnish Francis' image as "the People's Pope," a man who eschews pomp and ceremony, favoring small and intimate gatherings instead.
Francis has famously refused to live in the sumptuous papal apartment, picked out a used Fiat to scoot around Rome and dropped the fancy papal vestments and high theological language of his predecessors. Emphasizing his common-man roots, Francis said recently he was a janitor and a bar bouncer in Argentina before becoming a priest.
Perhaps as a birthday present to himself, the Pope, without going through the usual church channels, announced the canonization of a 16th-century Jesuit priest on Tuesday.
The Rev. Pierre Favre (known in the United States as Peter Faber) was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus, the Catholic order of priests to which Pope Francis himself belongs. Francis has praised Favre's "careful interior discernment" and "simple piety."
In September, the Pope used a similar process to announce the canonization of the late Pope John XXIII, who will officially be made a saint, along with Pope John Paul II, in April.
In the Pope's birthplace of Buenos Aires, where Francis was an archbishop, Catholics are celebrating his birthday by pitching a "missionary tent" in one of the city's most troubled areas, where they will minister to migrants, prostitutes, the homeless and jobless, the Vatican said.
"God has always walked alongside his people," beginning with the Hebrew patriarchs, the Pope preached at Tuesday morning's Mass.
God became man at Christmas to redeem and share in the lives of saints and sinners alike – even "high-level sinners," Francis said.
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