New Delhi: Pope Francis was in the news earlier this month after his ‘secret’ visit to a record shop in central Rome was reported in the media.
His visit to the shop on January 11 night was not supposed to be publicised but a local reporter happened to be in the area and he filmed it using his smartphone. The footage posted by him on Twitter went viral.
He has now congratulated the reporter, Javier Martinez-Brocal of television news agency Rome Reports, for his scoop.
Pope Francis, 85, is known to be a great lover of classical music, and the StereoSound record record shop located just a few steps from the Pantheon in Rome is run by his old friends.
In a letter sent to Martinez-Brocal on Thursday, Pope Francis joked that it was his “bad luck” that the visit didn’t remain a secret, news agency Reuters reported.
“You can’t deny that it was a case of bad luck … that after taking all the precautions, there was a reporter there at the taxi rank,” he wrote in the letter that Martinez-Brocal shared with colleagues on Friday, the report said .
“One should not lose one’s sense of humour. Thanks for doing your job, even if it did put the pope in difficulty,” Francis was quoted as saying in the letter.
On January 11 night, the pope arrived at the StereoSound shop in a white Fiat 500 driven by an employee of the Vatican. He reportedly stayed inside the shop for around 15 minutes.
The owners of the shop later said they had been friends with Pope Francis for many years now, from the days when he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires in his native Argentina, the Reuters report said, adding that Francis took home a boxed-set of classical music CDs.
Pope Francis reportedly visited the shop often to buy classical music records and CDs during his visits to Rome.
“What I miss the most (since he became pope) is not being able to walk around the streets, as I did in Buenos Aires, walking from one parish to another,” he wrote in the letter to Martinez-Brocal, as quoted in the Reuters report.
Francis is known to like Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, and also tango music from Argentina.
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