Pope Francis confessed this Friday that what he misses most in Rome is not being able to “walk the streets” like I did in Buenos Aires, where he could go “walking from one parish to another”.
This was confessed in a letter sent to the Spanish journalist and director of the “Rome Reports” television agency, Javier Martínez Brocal, who discovered him last Tuesday leaving a record store in the center of Rome.
Francisco had gone to visit the owners of the record store, old acquaintances from when he was a cardinal and visited the Italian capital periodically for his religious tasks.
In the letter, Francisco assures that he took “all precautions” not to be seen, but that “bad luck” right “there was a journalist waiting for a person at the taxi rank”.
“What I miss the most in this diocese is not being able to walk the streets, as I did in Buenos Aires, walking from one parish to another. Thank you for fulfilling your vocation, even if it is putting the Pope in difficulty,” he added jokingly in the message sent to the journalist.
The letter responded to another that Martínez Brocal had previously sent to apologize for having taken those images that traveled the world quickly, because of the unusualness of seeing the Pope on the streets of Rome almost like a common neighbor.
“It makes me sad that the Pope, who is a lover of freedom, has to be locked up in his house because every time he moves he discovers a camera. I wrote to him to tell him that I’m sorry and that on the other hand news was needed like this one that makes you smile, at this time when we only talk about tragedies,” said the journalist.
Last Tuesday, Francis went shortly before 7:00 p.m. to “Sterosound,” one of Rome’s small and historic music stores near the Pantheon, and stayed inside for about 15 minutes.
According to what the owners told Martínez Brocal, Francisco, a well-known passionate about music, he was a regular visitor to the store when he was still known as Jorge Bergoglio and served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
El Papa Francisco. Photo: EFE / EPA / ETTORE FERRARI
Francis had not visited the store since he was elected pope. on March 13, 2013, and the owners took advantage of the occasion to tell him that they had carried out some renovations in the premises and asked him to bless them, to which the religious agreed.
As a gesture of recognition, the store owners gave Francisco a record, although they refused to say which one.
Francis has rarely left the Vatican for personal matters and it was recently learned that he did so on three occasions: to visit a survivor of the Auschwitz camps, the writer Edith Bruck; to a professor, Mara, 90 years old, who taught at the University of Sapienza; and to offer condolences to an Italian journalist friend of his on the death of his mother.
He could also be seen twice in the center of Rome: when he went in person to buy some new shoes, and when he visited an optician to buy some glasses.
Source: EFE
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