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.
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.
“[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.
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.
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.
