New York Times Rome Bureau Chief to Cover Pope Leo XIV's Inaugural Africa Trip with Vatican Press Corps

m. on Monday to travel to Fiumicino Airport in Rome. The reporter aimed to board a plane with the Vatican press corps to accompany Pope Leo XIV on his first papal trip to Africa. Editors sent a message about President Trump’s Truth Social post criticizing the pope a few minutes before the reporter checked their phone.

The pope’s plane departs from a rarely used terminal at Fiumicino Airport in Rome. The press pool at the airport mentioned President Trump’s post. Valentina Alazraki, a Mexican correspondent and the longest serving Vaticanista, has covered 165 papal trips over half a century.

# Role and Background of the Reporter The narrator became The New York Times’s Rome bureau chief in June 2025. Traveling with the pope involves seeing countries through windows of transit vans with high-speed police escorts and from inside churches. The papal plane is known as Shepherd One.

Shepherd One is a standard airliner operated by ITA Airways. It includes customized seat antimacassars and special flight menus as papal retrofitting. Seating on Shepherd One for most journalists is first come first served.

# Prior Trip Details Pope Leo XIV’s first international trip was to Turkey and Lebanon last November. On the return flight from Turkey and Lebanon, journalists saw Pope Leo XIV sitting in the first row without a fancy reclining first-class seat. On the opening leg of a papal trip, the pope walks to the back of the plane, says a few words of welcome, and greets each journalist personally.

On the flight to Turkey, Pope Leo XIV revealed that he solved The Times’s Wordle puzzle in three guesses that morning. The convention is that the pope gives a news conference on the return flight and occasionally on intermediary legs of a trip. The press corps selects journalists to ask questions by lottery.