The new facilities include washers and dryers donated by Haier as well as detergent. In addition to the laundry services, there are hot showers, and a full range of personal hygiene products will be available, such as shampoo, conditioners, body washes, razors, and shaving creams provided by Procter & Gamble.
These services are “offered free of charge to the poorest people, in particular those without a fixed abode,” Calvi said.
This is not the first such project that the pope has launched in Italy. In 2015 Pope Francis launched a barbershop for the poor, a service run by volunteers, to help provide essential grooming services for Rome’s indigent and homeless.
This effort was followed by the first “Pope’s Laundromat,” which opened in Rome in 2017 and a second one in the Ligurian port city of Genoa in 2019.
This initiative was born out of Pope Francis’ apostolic letter Misericordia et Misera, which was released at the conclusion of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016.