ROME: The Arrigoni bakery has made bread for the popes for almost a century, from rosetta rolls to wholewheat loaves — but mass tourism has proved deadly and no prayers can save it now.

“We turned the oven off on Tuesday,” said Angelo Arrigoni, 79, whose father opened the little shop in 1930 during Pius XI’s papacy, and who would hand-deliver bread to the papal household.

Each time a new head of the Catholic Church was elected, the “Panificio Arrigoni” on Borgo Pio, just a five-minute walk from St Peter’s Square, would get ready to cater to the new pope’s tastes. Polish Pope John Paul II, elected in 1978, “said he wanted the bread his workers ate”, Arrigoni said.

“The workers ate both the ‘ciriola’, that big, classic Roman loaf that hardly anyone makes anymore, and rosetta rolls,” he said.

“So for his whole papacy, which lasted almost 27 years, we gave him five ‘ciriola’ and five rosetta rolls.” When his successor Benedict XVI was elected, Arrigoni rang the papal household but was told by a nun that the new German pope would be sticking with the baker he frequented as a cardinal. “But I am that baker!” he told her, for Benedict had already been getting cheese and unleavened bread from him as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Pope Francis has also been served by Arrigoni — but will now need to look elsewhere for his daily bread, after the baker found himself squeezed by a drop in loyal local customers and steep energy prices. “The district has changed,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2023