ACI Prensa – Pope Francis (Papa Francisco in Spanish) joked with a group of Mexican seminarians who asked him about his knee pain, sparking laughter.
“Pope Francis, how are you on your knee?” one of the seminarians asked him. “Very capricious,” the pontiff responded when speaking of knee problems for which he was first seen in a wheelchair at a public event in early May and had to postpone a trip to Lebanon.
The seminarian successively told him “but thank you for your smile, your joy for being here despite the inconvenience. You give us a lot of examples also for future priests”.
Francisco, 85, was doing the rounds of St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican in his pope-mobile after the general audience on Wednesday when he stopped to say hello to the group of newly-ordained priests, one of whom asked him about his knee and with a mischievous look: “Do you know what I need for my leg? A little tequila”, to which everyone burst out laughing.
The priest thanks the pontiff for his good mood “in spite of your discomfort”.
“If one day we go to Santa Marta we will bring you a little bottle,” they assured him when referring to a visit to Francisco’s private residence in the Vatican.
This minute-long conversation, filmed by one of the Mexican priests during the pope’s weekly general audience last Wednesday, was posted on TikTok and went viral.
It is not the first time Francisco has wisecracked about tequila. In 2016, ahead of a trip to Mexico, one enthusiastic priest shouted out to the in Saint Peter’s Square “we are waiting for you!”
“With tequila or without tequila?” the pontiff asked with a cheeky smile.
He also does not spare funny comments about the pain in his knee that he has suffered for months, which is why he underwent an infiltration at the beginning of May due to the rupture of the ligament to relieve the pain.
In January he explained during a general audience to the faithful his health problems: “It is something temporary. They say this only happens to older people, and I don’t know why it happened to me…”, he concluded with a smile as the audience applauded.
