Pope Francis: 'I Did Not Want To Be Pope,' Pontiff Opens Up On The Job

Pope Francis poked fun at himself and his job during a question-and-answer meeting with a group of Jesuit school students.

The Pope showed a humanistic, real side of himself on Friday, when he unabashedly answered questions with unscripted commentary, saying he didn't want to live in the sumptuous Vatican housing because it would be 'boring', the Telegraph reported.

He went on to mention that he had made the decision to eschew the apostolic lodgings for a resident hotel located in the Vatican instead, because he loves living with people. He may be pious, but he's no ascetic.

"It's a personality problem. I need to live with people," he said. "If I lived alone, I would feel a bit isolated and it wouldn't be good for me. It would be bad and boring. A professor asked me about this and I told him, 'listen, professor, it's for psychiatric reasons,'" he said with a knowing smile and a nod toward the audience.

Pope Francis also admitted that he did not even want the job, opening up about the difficulties that come along with the stressful and emotionally taxing job of leading the world's Catholics.

"Someone who wants to be pope does not really like themselves," he chuckled in response to a child's question about the Pope's experience as a religious leader.

"I did not want to be Pope," the 76-year-old pontiff said.

Benedict XCI, Pope Francis' predecessor, also said once that he had prayed that God not put him in the elected position of pope but that, "evidently, this time, he didn't listen to me."

The Pope also spoke on global poverty, naming it an utter, "scandal," while he told the students to work against "the economic and social structures that "enslave us," a message he conveyed earlier this week when he condemned wasting food, equating it to "stealing from the table of the poor and the hungry."