Catriona Gray: I was not romanticizing poverty

Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray said she was not romanticizing poverty during the Question & Answer portion of the international pageant last December.

"I was not romanticizing poverty. I'm not saying that it's beautiful there," she told GMA News' Jessica Soho during an interview in New York on Wednesday.

In the Final Word portion of the pageant — the Q&A of the Top 3 candidates — Catriona was asked what the most important lesson she's learned in her life.

Her answer:

I work a lot in the slums of Tondo, Manila and the life there is very…poor and it’s very sad. And I've always taught myself to look for the beauty in it. To look in the beauty in the faces of the children and to be grateful. And I would bring this aspect as a Miss Universe to see situations with a silver lining and to assess where I could give something, where I could provide something as a spokesperson. And this I think, if I could teach people to be grateful, we could have an amazing world where negativity could not grow and foster and children could have a smile on their faces.

Her answer drew mixed reactions from social media users. While many rejoiced at her articulate and composed answer, it did not sit well with others.

But Catriona said that was the poor's spirit and will that she found beautiful, and not their situation.

"So if you'll look at my answer in the context of looking at the first sentence, it does not romanticize poverty 'cause I start from that point. And you know, there's nothing beautiful about poverty but in the people that you talk to, the teachers that I've met, the children who I've heard their stories of, and the families that I've heard stories of," she said.

"There is something beautiful about their spirit, their will, their determination and that's what I was referring to," she added.

Catriona is the fourth Filipina to be hailed as Miss Universe queen after Pia Wurtzbach (2015), Gloria Diaz (1969) and Margarita Moran (1973). — Jessica Bartolome/BM, GMA News