Pope Francis: 'I Need to Live Among People'

Pope Francis told a group of schoolchildren Monday he won't live in the palatial papal apartment for "psychiatric" reasons as he feels he needs to "live among people."

The pontiff welcomed children from Italy and Albania to an audience in Rome on Monday, where he put aside a prepared text and instead took their questions for a half hour, reports Seattlepi.com.

His everyday style is markedly different than that of his predecessors. He told the children, "If I was living alone, isolated, it wouldn't be good for me.

"A professor asked me the same question, 'Why don't you go and live there?' " Francis told the kids. "And I replied, 'Listen to me professor, it was for psychiatric reasons.'"

His comments came after the pope admitted last week that hadn't wanted to become Pope because "God doesn't give (an ambitious cardinal) His blessings."

Unlike many Catholic cardinals, Francis has never lived in luxury. As cardinal-archbishop of Buenos Aires, he lived in an apartment and took public transportation, and as pope, he lives in a guesthouse with fellow clergy instead of in the papal digs at the Apostolic Palace.

Even Rome's summer heat won't get him to move into a palace. Instead of spending the summer at Castel Gandolfo, a palace in the hills south of Rome, located above a lake, he will stay in the Vatican working.