“What I miss most in this diocese (that of Rome, of which he is also Bishop), is not being able to ‘stroll around’ as in Buenos Aires,” said Pope Francis in a letter to the journalist who caught him “in fraganti” on his visit to the Stereosound record store on Tuesday, January 11, 2022.

Javier Martinez Brocal, Director of “Rome Reports,” recorded the images of the Holy Father when he went to Letizia Giostra’s store and that of her family, on Via della Minerva, near the Pantheon in the center of Rome.

The journalist said in “Rome Reports” that he felt bad that the Pope “who is a lover of freedom, has to be locked in his house because, every time he moves, a camera discovers him” and that he wrote him to apologize while pointing out at the same time: “news like this that makes one smile was lacking, in this time in which we only talk of tragedies.”

The Pope’s Answer

 Afterward, the Pope answered him in a few lines and joked saying that it was bad luck that there was a journalist there. The Pontiff shared that “what I miss most in this diocese (of Rome, of which he is also Bishop) is not being able to “stroll around,” as he did in Buenos Aires, “walking from one parish to another.”

His Holiness thanked Martinez Brocal “for fulfilling his vocation, even if it’s putting the Pope in difficulty and, of course, as usual, he asks him “not to forget to pray for me; I do so for you.”

As Matteo Bruni, Director of the Holy See Press Office reported, Pope Francis blessed Stereosound’s newly renovated building. He has known the store’s owners since the time he was Archbishop and frequented the area, as he was residing in the Clergy House on Via della Scrofa during his stays in Rome.

Translation by Virginia M. Forrester