Vatican City – After the act of veneration of the Immaculate Conception in Piazza di Spagna on Monday, 8 December, Pope Leo XIV went to Castel Gandolfo, to Villa Barberini, to spend a few hours at rest. On Tuesday morning the Pontiff received the President of Ukraine and, in the evening, after dinner, he returned to the Vatican.
As usual, before getting into the car to go back to St Peter’s, the Pope spent some time with the journalists outside Villa Barberini. Among the questions was one from Jacopo Scaramuzzi – Vatican reporter for La Repubblica, by now known in the field for asking questions often devoid of any real sense – who wanted to know why Leo XIV had not prayed in a mosque during his recent trip to Turkey.
The Pope reacted with evident surprise, almost astonished that he should have to explain why a Pontiff does not pray in a mosque. “They said that I did not pray, but I had already given an answer on the plane, I mentioned a book. It may well be that I am praying even now, you understand? The style of prayer, in the moment and in the place I… in fact I prefer to pray in a Catholic church in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. But so much has been said about that moment, and it seems to me a bit curious…”, he said.
That word, “
curious”, made clear how
Leo XIV regards the controversy as contrived and entirely meaningless. Other questions were then put to the Pope, including one concerning his
private life and his apartment, to which he replied with great clarity, thus denying the false “scoops” and bogus “exclusives” that in recent months some
self-styled holders of titles who are not journalists have splashed across the papers, claiming that the Pope would be living with the
Augustinian community.
However objectively senseless the questions of these
journalists may be, one must acknowledge that they are also a sign of a climate generated in past years, when a certain kind of Vatican reporting had become accustomed to papal gestures that produced above all confusion. Today, therefore, what is normal is perceived as absurd and almost extraordinary, when in reality it is nothing of the kind. As
Leo XIV recalled, there is nothing strange if a Pope does not pray in a
mosque: it is obvious that he does not consider that the place where he is called to pray and that he prefers to address God in a church, before the
Blessed Sacrament, in the
Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
fr.G.V.
Silere non possum