Jo McKenna: Italy Correspondent on Pope Leo's first week in papacy, upcoming inaugural mass

The newly elected pope's preparing to deliver his inaugural mass this Sunday. 

A number of world leaders are expected to attend, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US Vice President JD Vance. 

Newstalk ZB's Jo McKenna is in Italy and told Mike Hosking Pope Leo has been very active in his first week of his papacy. 

She says he's made a number of unscheduled visits around Rome, repeating his message of world peace. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joe McKenna, how are you.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm exhausted, as you can imagine.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm not surprised he's a busy man. It's good to have,
dear I suggest. I'm not being age just about any
of this, but it's good to have an active pope
who's out and about and doing stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing. Actually, he's
sixty nine, he's out and about. He hasn't been sitting still.
He's been making unscheduled visits around Rome. Today. He also
met the tennis champion Yannick Sinner at the Vatican.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
He shared a couple of jokes.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, he was making jokes about Sinners the other day,
so maybe that was his idea of making that allegation
against him.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
He met the meeting. He's been meeting the media a lot,
hasn't he.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
He had a special audience with us on Monday, which
was very interesting. I was surprised. He gave a very
serious speech about defending media freedom around the world and
imprisoned journalists and asking journalists to watch the words that
we use, you know, not using weapons, using words as
a weapon of war. So really trying every speech he's given,

(01:09):
he's been trying to emphasize his message of peace so far,
and I think we're going to see that in focus
on Sunday at his official inauguration at the Vatican.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Is that going to draw a crowd?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I think we're going to see perhaps more than one
hundred thousand. It's hard to predict those crowds. But will
we see, for example, Vice President jd. Vance from the US.
We will see President Voladimir Celenski and the Canadian Prime
Minister Mark Karney and the Australian Prime Minister Anthony alberanezis.
So we're going to see some really interesting international leaders

(01:42):
at this inauguration on Sunday.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
When you're close with him, has he got a bit
of the old expector?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Do you know? I was talking about it with some
of the other journalists and we did feel that he
had a certain kind of presence. He's very self contained,
he's quite reserved, and yet he has a healthy sense
of humor, and I think he does have quite a
presence about him.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Actually, how big is he? Not too big? Is he?
What would he be? Five?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
What? Oh? I didn't get too close, but i'd say
five to seven. We allowed to talk in fetninches.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, we got to talk in fetn inches. That's how
we do it. It's interesting now, this is because I'm
following Trump with the great deal of interest, as I
suppose the whole rest of the world is where he's
not going through the Middle East, is through Israel and
touching base with the Zola Mate and Yahoo. And I'm
getting increasingly the sense that the worlds get a little
bit fit up with what he's doing, and Maloney might
be on that same page.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah. I was a little surprised today, Mike when the
Prime Minster Georgia Maloney attacked Nttanna, who saying what was
going on in Gaza was unjustifiable and dramatic, increasingly dramatic.
And then I looked at the polls and I thought, Aha,
So a recent Italian pole on the war in Gaza
said sixty eight percent of those they said Israel's military

(03:02):
response there was unacceptable and disproportionate. So that tells you
where Maloney's going at this point.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Interesting. How has mel Gibson been wrangled into luring Italian
films to the US And do they realize he's as
crazy as Yeah, I thought he.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Was totally out of fashion, but now, of course he's
a MUGA, he's a Trump supporter, and Trump has wrangled
him into being some kind of special ambassador to promote
cinema and trying to get Italian producers to make Italian
films in the US. So we'll see how that goes.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Go well, Joe, we'll catch up next week, very much,
Joe McKinnon. Officially, we've got the Pope at five to
nine eighty seven. Kg's which my next obvious once you've
done five nine eighty sim cag's what's the bm I.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
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