Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has always wanted to sneak out freely onto the streets to meet people and even be able to buy a good pizza in the city.
“I miss going out into the streets; I truly long for it, the tranquility of walking down the street, or going to a pizzeria to eat a good pizza… I have always been ‘of the street’,” he said.
On Tuesday the Pontiff handlers organised for a cab and the Pope sneaked out onto a street corner to visit his old acquaintance operating a “Stereosound,” a record store whose owners he has known since his days as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Although the Pontiff handlers thought they had concealed this short visit, there was a nosy journalist whose lens was cocked ready to grab anything- then he saw the pope and pressed the shutter button.
On 11 January, Spanish journalist Javier Martínez Brocal was passing through Rome’s Pantheon area and saw the Pope leaving the record store named “Stereosound.”
The black and white photo of the Pope exiting the “disc-store of the Pantheon” – as local Romans call the locale – carrying a classical music record given to him by the owner of the store, Letizia Giostra, and her daughter Tiziana, went viral on social networks within minutes.
The Pope himself saw the photo and thanked Brocal for this “noble” post.
Pope Francis sent a brief letter to Rome-based journalist Javier Martínez Brocal that recently photographed the Pope leaving a record store, and encourages reporters to fulfill their journalistic vocation even if it makes others uncomfortable.
At the same time, he wrote, “one cannot deny that it was a ‘terrible fate’ (a misfortune, ed.) that, after taking all precautions, there was a journalist waiting for someone at the cab stop.”
The Pope immediately clarified in his letter that this remark was a light-hearted joke: “We must not lose our sense of humor.”
He also encouraged reporters to “fulfill their vocation” as journalists, “even if it means embarrassing (‘mettere in difficoltà’) the Pope.”
Pope Francis is no stranger to trips ‘out-on-the-town’, having visited an optician’s store in 2015 and then an orthopedic store in 2016.
He had ventured out late Tuesday afternoon to the music store in the heart of Rome to bless the recently renovated premises.
IHe chatted for about ten minutes with the owner, an old acquaintance of his from the days when he stayed as Archbishop of Buenos Aires in the “House of the Clergy” in Via della Scrofa.
