Rome: The Pope has disclosed that he has not watched television for 25 years — not even the matches played by his beloved Buenos Aires football team. The pontiff told an Argentine newspaper that he last switched on a television in 1990. After that he simply decided that “it was not for me”, he told La Voz del Pueblo.
To find out whether, San Lorenzo, his favourite football team has won or lost, he has to ask the Swiss Guards, who draw up a table of results for him each week. The Pope also disclosed that he reads only one newspaper — the Italian Left-of-centre daily La Repubblica.
The comment is unlikely to go down well with the editors of L’Osservatore Romano, the stodgy Vatican newspaper, or Avvenire, an equally sober tome owned by the Italian Bishops Conference. Asked what he most missed about his old life in Argentina,
Pope Francis cited the freedom to walk out into the streets and go to a pizzeria. The Argentinian newspaper suggested that he simply order in a pizza to eat in the Vatican. “Yes, but it’s not the same. The nice thing is to go to there, to the pizzeria,” he said.
“I’ve always been a keen walker. When I was a cardinal [in Buenos Aires] I used to love walking the streets”. He made the same complaint in March, when he was interviewed by a Mexican television channel on the second anniversary of his election as Pope.
Asked if he was able to sleep soundly, despite the burden of being the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church, he said: “I sleep very deeply”. The pontiff said that he goes to bed at around 9pm, reads for about an hour, and then sleeps from 10pm until 4am, when he gets up.
“It’s my biological clock,” he said, although he admitted that he has to compensate for such an early start with a siesta during the day of 40 minutes to an hour. “I take off my shoes and I lie on my bed for a rest,” he said. The Pope also said he did not use the internet and admitted to being under pressure.
“I am under pressure. All those in government are under pressure. At the moment I feel the workload. I have a strong pace of work at the moment — it’s the ‘end of the school year syndrome’ with the focus on getting everything done before the end of June,” he said.
