Did you hear the one about the Pope and the record store? It’s not the start of a bad joke, it actually happened.
Pope Francis took a break from leading an entire religion to browse the stalls of a Rome record store on Tuesday evening. He was actually friends with the owners of the store and came away from his visit with the gift of a CD.
You might think that this was a publicity stunt planned by the Church but fear not: Javier Martinez-Brocal, a reporter for the Rome Reports television news agency, just happened to be in the area by chance and captured the visit on his phone. He then posted the clip on Twitter.
Pope Francis was actually visiting for both pleasure and business. A Vatican spokesman informed that he had gone to the StereoSound record store to bless the place as it had been recently renovated.
He reportedly became friends with the store’s owners several years ago before he became the Pope and was simple Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires. He would stop by the store whenever he was in Rome on Church business and purchase classical music records and CDs.
They revealed that they gave the Pope a CD of classical music – he’s known to be a fan of the likes of Mozart and Bach – but wouldn’t say specifically what CD it was.
Whatever you think of Pope Francis, he’s undeniably the coolest Pope. He was named as Esquire‘s Best Dressed Man in 2013. He has his own Instagram account. He’s a fervent supporter of his favourite Argentinian football club. And now we find out that he loves browsing through record stores. He’ll be moving out of the Vatican to Brunswick any day now.
Check out footage of Pope Francis’s visit to the record store:
