“I ask you and your readers to pray for me.” Thus Pope Francis yesterday morning closed the private audience granted to the leaders of Il Giornale on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation which falls in a few days, exactly on June 25th. Early morning meeting at the Second Loggia of the Apostolic Palace where the Pontiff’s private apartment is also located, which can be accessed after walking along the famous corridor frescoed by Raphael and passing the halls where the history of the Church was made. Pope Francis is already back from other commitments, he has just dismissed Zuzana Caputova, the first female president of the Slovak Republic and her entourage. The Pope introduced himself smiling: “Even today they make me work, but I confess a secret to you: if I don’t work I get bored.” The director Alessandro Sallusti presented the delegation to the Holy Father: the editorial director Vittorio Feltri, the publisher’s family represented by Antonio, Gianpaolo, Alessandro and Simone Angelucci with their respective children, the group’s managing director Nicola Speroni and the general director Stefania Bedogni. The interview lasted about twenty minutes. In a cordial atmosphere we spoke about the role of information in the dramatic moment that the world is experiencing, in particular the war in Ukraine about which, Vittorio Feltri told the Pontiff, “you and I think the same way”. The director Sallusti reminded Pope Francis how in its fifty years of life this newspaper has been able to combine the secularism chosen by its founder Indro Montanelli among the distinctive signs of the adventure he was about to undertake with a profound respect and attachment to the Christian roots of ‘Italy and the entire West.
At the end of the meeting, the Angelucci family gave the Pope a seventeenth-century Roman crucifix as well as the first original copy of Il Giornale and a sculpture created specifically to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary. The Pope reciprocated with rosaries blessed by him. Then the farewell: «Pray for me, but please – he added with a touch of well-known irony – not against him».
