A cardinal who could be in the race to succeed Pope Francis has seemingly taken a brutal swipe at Britain in a surprise encounter with an Irish journalist.
Richard Chambers, who hosts Virgin News Media’s The Group Chat podcast, revealed he met a Portuguese-born cardinal in the heart of the Holy See before the conversation turned to the Emerald Isle.
In a clip titled 'Did Richard randomly meet the next Pope?', Chambers recounted: “He asked me where I was from.
“I said, obviously, I was from Ireland. He was like, ‘Oh, is it God Save the King Ireland, or is it St Patrick Ireland?’
A stock image of nuns in the Vatican City
GETTY
“I was like, ‘It’s St Patrick Ireland'. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, the good Ireland'.”
However, Chambers stressed the comment made be the cardinal was made as a mere quip.
“I think he was saying in jest,” he said. “He was clearly joking.”
Fellow podcast hosts Gavan Reilly and Zara King were left chuckling at the cardinal’s swipe at the UK, which appeared to specifically take aim at Unionists living in Northern Ireland.
Explaining how he knew the man he met in the shade of St Peter’s Square was a cardinal, Chambers added: “I thought he was maybe one of the priests who is in the apostolic college here.
“So, I was like, ‘How long you’ve been in Rome, Father?' And he pulls out - he flashes his hand at me. He has one of the big cardinal gold rings there.
Richard Chambers discusses his meeting with a cardinal
VIRGIN MEDIA NEWS
“I didn’t really recognise it at the time, and I was like, ‘What’s that mean or what’s that for?' He’s like, ‘I am a cardinal!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, wow - like you’re a cardinal?'
“He starts loudly shushing me because cardinals have been chased up and down the street and up and down the square here by packs of journalists.
“So I had blown his cover in many ways and he very hurriedly scampered off telling me to be a ‘good lad’ as well.”
“I was impressed by the use of the word ‘lad’ by this cardinal. He was apparently the second youngest cardinal in the curia. He’s a man from Portugal. So, yeah, strange things happen around these places.”
The cardinal’s Portuguese background appears to have led some social media users to speculate it was Cardinal Americo Aguiar.
Despite the alleged snub directed towards the UK, Prince William and Sir Keir Starmer will attend Pope Francis’s funeral in the Vatican tomorrow.
Pope Francis passed away on MondayPAEngland and Wales is also home to an estimated six million Catholics, with the North West of England and London emerging as major hotspots.
A large number of Scottish Catholics also live in Glasgow.
However, just one out of the Vatican’s 266 pontiffs have been from England, Scotland and Wales.
Pope Adrian IV, who was born as Nicholas Breakspear in Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, headed up the papacy between 1154 and 1159.
It is unlikely a Briton could emerge as the next pontiff, with several leading candidates vying to become the first black or Asian Pope.
Cardinals will have 10 to 15 days to decide Pope Francis’s successor in the Papal Conclave.
