ROME—Just hours after his dramatic election as leader of the Catholic world, an Italian journalist in Rome said the first thing Pope Francis did was to call her up for a friendly chat.
“The phone rang… My son picked it up and it was the pope,” Stefania Falasca, a former editor for a Catholic monthly, told Italian media.
“At home we just called him ‘father’, we never called him ‘eminence.’ I didn’t know what to say. I asked him ‘Father, what am I meant to call you? Holy Father?’” she said.
“He laughed and he told me ‘The first phone call I wanted to make was to say hello to you, Gianni and the kids,’” she said.
Falasca is married to Gianni Valente, who is also a journalist, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported.
Francis, formerly archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has already made his mark in Rome with his informal style.
source: newsinfo.inquirer.net
