ROME (AP) — Pope Francis was a frequent visitor to Rome long before he became pope, and over time found his favorite shops and artisans who are now pulling for him as he battles double pneumonia.
“The pope is by now a friend, a beloved person for me, not a customer,” said Francis’ optician, Alessandro Spiezia. “I am praying for his recovery.”
Francis’ occasional unannounced visits to Spiezia’s shop, on the tony Via del Babuino near Piazza del Popolo, often created mob scenes as tourists and Romans alike realized the pope was inside.
Francis has popped in a few times since becoming pope in 2013 to get new lenses for his glasses, arriving in a simple Ford or Fiat with minimal security detail and waving to well-wishers as he came and went.
The Argentine pope also has his favorite ice cream flavors, and a shop near his Vatican hotel has catered for years to his sweet tooth.
When Argentine ice cream maker Sebastian Padrón opened his gelato laboratory around the corner from the Santa Marta hotel, his dulce de leche ice cream, a typical Argentine caramel dessert, became the pope’s favorite.
“He called me on the phone after COVID to invite me,” Padròn told The Associated Press. “He wanted to meet me since he had been eating our ice cream for a few years. We went with my family, we talked to him for a long time. A very nice meeting, very friendly, very simple, as if we were neighbors and as if we had known each other our whole lives.”
“After we came to know of the hospitalization we sent him our greetings, and as he always says, we must pray for him,” he added.
A Vatican-area tailor also was following news of Francis’ hospitalization.
“We are all saddened and we all pray for the recovery of the pope,” said Raniero Mancinelli, who sold the modest pectoral cross that Francis has been wearing for the past few decades.
Before Francis’ papacy, Mancinelli sold lavish crosses set with gemstones to cardinals and bishops. But afterward, the clerical style shifted to simpler crosses made of silver, Mancinelli said.
They are similar to the one that a bishop friend purchased in 1998 and later gave to the future pope, who at the time was archbishop of Buenos Aires. According to Mancinelli, the current cross that the pope still wears was bought in his shop.
“Francis immediately went on a much simpler and essential style,” he explained as he cut the fabric for a bishop’s garment in his historic workshop, steps away from the Vatican.
When he became pope in 2013, Francis decided not to live in the lavish, baroque papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter’s Square, but to stay in an austere room at the Santa Marta hotel inside Vatican City.
He has lamented that he can't walk around freely as he did when he lived in Buenos Aires, when he was known for taking public transportation.
As an archbishop, Francis came to Rome frequently on periodic visits to the Vatican and frequented his favorite shops, including a record shop where he would stock up on his beloved classical music and tango.
In 2022, when he went to bless the newly renovated shop and visit its owners, a Vatican reporter happened to be nearby and filmed him exiting. Francis later reached out and mused about the attention he draws during his local outings.
“I won’t deny that it was (bad luck) that after taking all the precautions, there was a journalist waiting," Francis later wrote the journalist, Javier Martinez-Brocal. “You can’t lose your sense of humor.”
