In this image from video made available by Javier Martinez Brocal of Rome Reports, Pope Francis leaves a record shop in Rome, Tuesday, Jan.

Francis wrote a note to the Vatican reporter who happened to be in the right place at the right time Tuesday evening when the pope slipped out of the Vatican to bless the newly renovated Stereo Sound shop near the Pantheon.

Javier Martinez-Brocal, director of the Rome Reports news agency, filmed Francis leaving the shop, in footage that went viral and even got written up in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

The shop owners later told The Associated Press that Francis had arrived unannounced at around 7 p.m., after he had told them during a previous encounter at the Vatican that he would come to visit.

Co-owner Danilo Genio said Francis was a longtime customer who had popped in whenever he was in Rome for meetings at the Vatican when he was a priest, archbishop and then cardinal in Buenos Aires.

“When he came to Rome to go to the Vatican he used to come here first to buy some gifts,” he said.