Seeing is Believing: Man Says 'Sorry' for Hanging up Twice on Pope

An Italian man has extended his sincerest apologies to Pope Francis for hanging up twice on the Pontiff because he thought it was a prank call.

Pope Francis received the personal apology of an Italian man, Franco Rabuffi, who hung up on the Pontiff twice, thinking that he had fallen victim to a hoax caller, according to the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano.

The apology came after Pope Francis, who often contacts strangers who have written to him, called Rabuffi earlier this week to comfort him; Rabuffi suffers from an illness.

Pope Francis waves as he delivers a "Urbi et Orbi" message from the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 5, 2015

© REUTERS / Alessandro Bianchi

Thinking that it was a hoax, Rabuffi hung up on the Pope twice, but he finally took His Holiness seriously after the head of the Roman Catholic Church patiently rang back a third time.

"I was speechless but Francis came to my rescue, saying that what had happened was funny," Rabuffi was quoted by the Vatican newspaper as saying.

Rabuffi extended his personal apologies to the Pope during the Vatican's general audience on Wednesday, when he and his wife appeared before the Pontiff.

In April 2013, an Italian teenager was stunned to pick up the phone and hear the voice saying "Hello, it's Pope Francis here." Like Rabuffi, he at first thought it was a prank call but later took the Pope seriously.

In a separate development, Pope Francis called his local news kiosk in his home town of Buenos Aires to ask them to cancel his newspaper subscription; the episode took place five days after Francis was elected as the first Pope to have been born in the Americas.