Pope Shuns Palace Apartment

Pope Francis, much like his saintly namesake, is keeping things simple. He has shunned the fancy robes favored by his predecessor, and now he's broken with a tradition more than a century old by declining to move into the grand papal apartment in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, Reuters reports. For now, he plans to stay in a simple two-room suite in the hotel-style Vatican building where he stayed during the papal conclave. The palace quarters he has declined have more than a dozen rooms, along with staff quarters and a terrace overlooking Rome.

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis declined to move into the Bishop's Palace and lived in a simple apartment, often cooking his own meals, the BBC reports. His current quarters are in a communal building shared by priests, where he eats his meals in a communal dining room. "I can't make long-term predictions, but for now it seems he is experimenting with this type of simple co-habitation," a Vatican spokesman says. "It is still a period of getting used to things, of experimentation. Certainly in this phase he has expressed the desire to stay where he is." (More Pope Francis stories.)