Pope Francis, a classical music fan, snuck out of the Vatican on Tuesday evening to pay a visit to old friends who manage a record shop in Rome, and received a CD as a gift.
The visit was supposed to be private, but Javier Martinez-Brocal, a reporter for the Rome Reports television news agency, happened to be in the neighbourhood and recorded it on his phone, which he then uploaded on Twitter.
Pope lingered for less than ten minutes at the StereoSound record store near the Pantheon. According to a Vatican spokeswoman, the Pope visited the business to bless it after it had recently been rebuilt.
The shop’s owners informed Martinez-Brocal that they had been friends with the pope when he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, years ago.
When he was in Rome on Church business, he would stop by their shop to buy classical music LPs and CDs, and he stayed in a nearby villa for visiting priests.
They said they presented the pope a classical music CD but wouldn’t say what it was. Te Pope is known to enjoy Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach, as well as Argentine tango music.
The pope, who avoids armoured cars, was seen leaving the shop and getting into a basic white Fiat 500 with Vatican number plates, according to the footage.
The pope’s visit to a Rome store was not his first. He ordered a new set of eyeglasses from a Rome optician in 2015, two years after his election.
They were supposed to be delivered to the Vatican, but he insisted on picking them up himself.
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