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When Sebastian Padrón opened his ice-cream parlour around the corner from Pope Francis’s home in Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City, his wife, Silvia, came up with a clever way of ingratiating her husband with his fellow Argentinian.
“She told me: ‘Go and bring an ice-cream to Pope Francis,’” said Padrón. “I said: ‘Impossible.’”
Dismissing her husband’s scepticism, Silvia decided to take on the task herself. She scurried over to Casa Santa Marta, in a building adjacent to St Peter’s Basilica, and asked a Swiss guard if she could bring some ice-cream for the pontiff.
“The Swiss guard said yes, and that whatever she brings to the pope he will gladly receive it. So we brought him 4kg of ice-cream.”
It was 2018, and ice-cream orders from Pope Francis and other high-ranking Vatican officials became regular, marking the start of a friendship between the Padrón family and the pontiff, whose favourite flavour is dulce de leche, a typical Argentinian caramel dessert, although he also likes lemon and mango.
But Padrón really captured the pope’s heart in 2020, after coronavirus lockdown restrictions were eased, by sending him a home-made empanada, the Argentinian equivalent of a Cornish pasty.
Again, it was Silvia’s intervention that did the trick. “She wrote a message on the empanada saying: ‘It’s about time we met’,” said Padrón. “Francis then called me and invited the family to Casa Santa Marta. I was so nervous but he made us feel completely relaxed. He’s a very kind, simple person.”
Francis, who has been in hospital with pneumonia for two weeks, was a regular visitor to the Italian capital before becoming pope in 2013, making friends with several shopkeepers, including keeping up visits to the premises of some despite his movements in public being limited, before his current bout of illness.
Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on 14 February after struggling to breathe and was subsequently diagnosed with a respiratory tract infection and pneumonia in both lungs. His condition has been touch and go but there has been a slight improvement in recent days. However, as of Thursday, medics still gave a “guarded” prognosis, meaning he was not yet out of danger.
The mood among well-wishers in Rome has been one of apprehension. “We hope that he continues to get better, but I’m a little worried,” said Cristina who was in St Peter’s Square with her husband, Mario. “He was very much for ordinary people. We live in Rome … we’ve never met him but he feels more like a parish priest than a pope, such is his humility.”
His relationships with local shopkeepers are seen by many as a testament to the humility of the pope, although some traders initially feared when he took up the papacy that his frugal approach might not favour them.
“[When Francis became pope] he immediately started working to simplify things,” said Raniero Mancinelli, a tailor who owns Mancinelli Clero, a historic shop in Borgo Pio, next to the Vatican, that produces ecclesiastical robes and jewellery. “We were a little concerned that this would mean cutting out a bit of luxury. But in the end we carried on working as usual.”
Mancinelli, who has fitted out garments for Francis and met him personally, added: “One might say he’s stubborn, but I disagree. Yes, he’s someone who is direct and likes to get things done. We are really rooting for him to pull through and want to see him back at St Peter’s. Francis – the people are waiting for you.”
Among the pope’s other shopkeeper friends in Rome are Alessandro Spieza, an optician on Via del Babuino in the city’s historic centre. The pope has occasionally turned up at the shop unannounced, arriving in his modest Fiat 500 or Ford Focus.
In 2022, Francis, a lover of classical music, slipped out of the Vatican one evening to visit old friends at Stereosound, a music shop next to the Pantheon. He was there to bless the shop’s new renovations and left with a gift box containing vinyls. Neither Spieza nor the owner of Stereosound wanted to recount their experiences to journalists, out of respect for the pope and his health.
Nightly prayers vigils for the pope’s health are being held at St Peter’s basilica and in towns and cities across Italy and abroad, especially in his home city of Buenos Aires.
“May our prayer be the breath of air that Pope Francis’s lungs need. Do not slow down. We need you very much,” Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, said this week.
