Pope slips out of Vatican to visit optician

ROME—Pope Francis slipped out of the Vatican on Thursday for a personal—and very normal—errand: new glasses.

Francis arrived at dusk at the Ottica Spiezia on swank Via del Babuino in his small Ford Focus car, accompanied by his bodyguard and some plainclothes police, witness Daniel Soehe said.

Shop owner Alessandro Spiezia told The Associated Press (AP) he put new lenses in the Pope’s existing frames. He said he had made the Pope new glasses last year, and that the Pope had liked them so much that he asked him to fill a new prescription.

“I was supposed to go to the Vatican yesterday to bring them but the Pope told his secretary, ‘No, I don’t want Spiezia to come here, I’ll go to Via del Babuino,’” a clearly emotional Spiezia said moments after the Pope left with his new prescription filled.

The Pontiff tried on a few frames for about 40 minutes, and according to specialized Vatican news agency

I-Media, he asked the shopkeeper to charge him the normal price.

Prefers old frames

Francis, 78, who is longsighted, had previously been a customer of the shop, as had his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, according to the optician’s website.

Video obtained by AP showed the Pope trying on the new glasses and being fitted by Spiezia and an assistant—a completely normal event rendered completely remarkable because the customer was the Pope.

“He had told me to use the old frames again because he did not want to spend much money and insisted on paying for them,” Spiezia said on Italian television.

A visit to Mary

The Pope was mobbed by an enormous crowd gathered outside the shop, grabbing onto his arm as he got into the car for the quick trip back to the Vatican.

Francis has lamented that he can no longer come and go as he pleases: He famously rode public transport in Buenos Aires as an archbishop, and has said one of the things he misses most now that he is Pope is being able to go out for a pizza.

He does slip out occasionally, however, especially to visit the St. Mary Major basilica, usually on the eve of a foreign trip and upon his return home.

But even when Francis renewed his Argentine passport—another mundane errand—the Argentine ambassador to the Holy See came to him, not vice versa.

Misses walking around

Soehe, a German tourist visiting Rome with his father, said he was stunned to see the Pope in the shop, trying on the glasses, especially after he waited for four hours earlier in the day, in vain, to climb to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica.

“There were too many people, and also the president of Israel was visiting and there were so many police officers, so it was too much for us and we went back to the hotel,” Soehe told AP.

“I told my father, ‘Hey, that was better than going to St. Peter’s dome: Seeing the Pope in a shop trying on new glasses.’”

When Francis isn’t using his glasses, he keeps them tucked into his pants pocket, unlike Benedict, who always handed his eyeglasses off to an aide when he didn’t need them.

The Pope said on Mexican television last year that since his election in 2013 he missed being able to walk around Rome alone—and not being able to go out for a pizza. Reports from AP, AFP