Making a spectacle: What happened when the pope went to buy a new pair of glasses?

This:

Pope Francis slipped out of the Vatican Thursday for a personal — and very normal — errand: New glasses.

Francis arrived at dusk at the Ottica Spiezia on swank Via del Babuino in his Ford Focus, accompanied by his bodyguard and some plainclothes police, witness Daniel Soehe said.

Shop owner Alessandro Spiezia told The Associated Press he put new lenses in the pope’s existing frames. He said he had made the pope new glasses last year, and that the pope had liked them so much that he asked him to fill a new prescription.

“I was supposed to go to the Vatican yesterday to bring them, but the pope told his secretary, ‘No, I don’t want Spiezia to come here, I’ll go to Via del Babuino,’” a clearly emotional Spiezia said moments after the pope left with his new prescription filled.

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