In his prepared remarks to Representatives of Paraguay's Civil Society yesterday, Pope Francis said:

A fundamental part of helping the poor involves the way we see them.  An ideological approach is useless: it ends up using the poor in the service of other political or personal interests (Evangelii Gaudium, 199).  To really help them, the first thing is for us to be truly concerned for their persons, valuing them for their goodness.  Valuing them, however, also means being ready to learn from them.  The poor have much to teach us about humanity, goodness and sacrifice.  As Christians, we have an additional reason to love and serve the poor; for in them we see the face and the flesh of Christ, who made himself poor so to enrich us with his poverty (cf. 2 Cor 8:9).

But, as always with Francis, his off the cuff additions provide both insight and bemusement. Inés San Martín of Crux fills in the picture:

“Ideologies end badly, they do not work because they have a relationship that is either incomplete, or sick or wrong with the people,” Francis said. “Look at the last century, what ideologies ended in: Dictatorships, always.”

Francis then said that ideologies think of the people, but don’t let the people think, everything for the people but nothing with the people.

And this intriguing glimpse behind the smiling face:

He then “admitted” that he gets allergies, “a running nose,” when people such as politicians give grandiose speeches but “when I meet these people, I can’t help thinking ‘what a big liar you are'."

Havana and Washington -- please keep the Kleenex ready!