Holy Soles: How Pope Francis' ordinary shoes brought pride to his neighbourhood

The man who would become Pope Francis always bought his shoes in the same small store. And now, the remarkably ordinary footwear that surprised and charmed millions has brought pride to his old Buenos Aires neighbourhood — and to his cobbler.

The simple black shoes — a stark contrast to the flashy ruby red slippers of Francis’ predecessor, former Pope Benedict XVI — are among the pope’s personal effects that have captured attention as his death this week triggers an outpouring of emotion around the Roman Catholic world.

The seemingly comfortable loafers offer a powerful reminder of Francis’ humility, simplicity and lack of ceremony that helped him relate to ordinary people wherever he went.

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Who is the third-generation cobbler?

The Muglia family men were the first cobblers in the middle-class Flores neighborhood of western Buenos Aires. Their shop, Muglia Shoes, opened in 1945, just a few years after Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio to Italian immigrant parents.

There wasn’t much competition, so when a young Bergoglio came in to buy shoes, it was Juan Jose Muglia’s grandfather who sold him the first pair. Bergoglio was in his 20s then, serving as a Jesuit priest at the Basilica of San José de Flores just around the block.

“My father, my grandfather, they told me stories about how Father Jorge came from the church around the corner to buy these shoes, they were the ones he liked, and he wore them all the time,” Muglia, 52, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“They’re simple, it’s the kind of shoes that waiters like to wear today, Muglia said, holding up a pair of the handmade lace-up loafers. “They can last you years and years.”

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When Muglia took over after his father’s death, he added a poster of Elvis Presley, a Harley Davidson motorbike and a vinyl turntable to give the place a hipster note.

A time gone by

The racks now display newer fashions like pointy boat shoes and bright patent leather numbers.

But much of the shop remains the same, including the pinewood-panelled walls, floor-to-ceiling shelves of cream-coloured shoeboxes and, of course, the leather black loafers with grippy, non-slip soles that Francis repeatedly purchased, inspiring local Catholic priests to do the same.

“Priests came here from all the basilicas in the city, some young priests even came from Rome to buy them,” said Muglia.

They sell for around $170 today — far more than the price-tag Francis saw — due to Argentina’s runaway inflation.

When Francis became pope in 2013, Muglia said he offered to send the pontiff off to St. Peter’s with a new pair of his favourite shoes. But he recalled Francis saying that his feet had become too swollen in his old age and he needed to find a more customized fit that he could depend on in Rome.

Curiosity over the Pope’s footwear

Rather than adopt the typical papal shoes — red velvet or silk — as pope, Francis didn’t stray from his Flores roots.

He chose normal black shoes with an orthopaedic sole — a far cry from the Byzantine era, when pilgrims customarily kissed a decorative cross embroidered on the papal shoe and from the era of Pope Benedict, whose bespoke leather slippers in a succulent tomato red prompted Esquire Magazine to name the former pontiff “Accessoriser of the Year” in 2007, prompting intense speculation about the designer brand.

As years passed, beyond the occasfional priest or parishioner who dropped into Muglia Shoes, few ever wondered about the brand of Francis’ plain footwear.

But that changed when Francis died on Monday (April 21) at the age of 88, setting off a frenzy of interest about his Flores roots. Around the world, Francis was remembered for paring down the papacy’s inherited pomp to become more accessible — swapping the fur-trimmed velvet cape that popes had worn since the Renaissance for a simple white cassock, and preferring a Ford Focus to the usual papal limo.

As word spread about his original footwear and local journalists flooded the neighbourhood, Muglia said curious customers have bombarded him with requests. He placed a framed portrait of Francis prominently in his window.

“It was a world of people,” Muglia said. “They came from everywhere.”

The love for Pope Francis in Flores

In Flores, the mourning for Francis feels personal. Residents remember him as someone who lived frugally, visited and advocated for the city’s poorest and could often be found sharing Argentina’s signature yerba maté drink with old friends and strangers.

At the newspaper stand just down the block from Muglia Shoes, vendor Antonio Plastina, 69, recalled how he and Francis made small talk “like any two Argentines, a bit of this and that, some politics mixed with soccer.”

“He was a marvelous person, those are beautiful memories,” Plastina said, his eyes welling up. After becoming archbishop and cardinal, Francis still made the half-hour drive to Flores from downtown Buenos Aires every Sunday before church.

He always bought the two main Argentine daily papers, Plastina said, and read the news with a cup of coffee at the quiet cafe across the street, now a mattress store on a traffic-clogged intersection.

Although the crowds that poured into Flores upon learning of Francis’ death largely tapered out by Thursday, they left a mass of bouquets and handwritten notes to their beloved pontiff at the iron-barred windows of Membrillar 531, the modest house where Francis grew up as the eldest of five siblings.

“My vision is going but my memory is long,” said Alicia Gigante, 91, Francis’ neighbour and family friend, who stopped at the house on Thursday morning, leaning on her daughter for support.

“I’ll remember him for a long time, always his kindness, his smile, and that greeting when you rang the doorbell and he came out into the street,” she said, her voice trembling. “There he was, always the same, he would caress you and bless you.”