Vatican City, Dec 10, 2019 / 12:00 pm
Imagine that your cell phone rings, and the display says the call is from a "private number." You expect it to be a telemarketer. But instead, when you answer, you hear a man with an Argentine accent say: "This is Francis. I received your letter."
That phone call happened to Daniel Ibanez, the CNA and EWTN News Vatican photographer, on an ordinary weekday morning in December 2018.
"I effectively stayed frozen, because I was speaking with the pope," Ibanez told CNA. "He said: 'I would like to invite you to the Mass at Casa Santa Marta on Dec. 20, 2018, which will be the last I publicly celebrate in the Vatican [before Christmas].'"
Ibanez had sent a letter to Pope Francis two months prior, in October 2018, telling him about his experience as a young Catholic from Palencia, Spain, living and working in Italy as a photographer for a Catholic media organization.