Harry Styles has a charming and golden explanation for his recent visit to Vatican City. Eight months after his unlikely appearance in the city as Pope Leo XIV, the Grammy winner—who recently returned to music with his new single “Aperture”—shared how he found himself among the thousands of observers in the Holy See.
“I was getting a haircut in Rome,” he recalled in an interview with BBC Radio 1 released on Jan. 22. “And I heard all these people start shouting, ‘Habemus papam, habemus papam,’ and people running down the street.” So after Harry’s barber—who also briefly joined in on the chanting—finished the trim, the 31-year-old decided to venture into St. Peter’s Square to witness the historic moment for himself. “I was like, ‘I’m a five-minute walk from there,’ so I walked over,” he continued. “It was wild.”
In fact, the One Direction alum joked that he wasn’t used to being a spectator in such a scenario, adding, “I was like, ‘Who is this getting all this attention?’” Indeed, as Pope Leo—born Robert Francis Prevost—made his first papal appearance following his election as the late Pope Francis’ successor in May, one eagle-eyed onlooker spotted Harry in the crowd, dressed casually in a blue jacket with black shades and a dark hat reading “Techno is My Boyfriend.” The sighting quickly went viral, with social media users cracking jokes about his unpredictable whereabouts.
“Harry Styles is so random,” one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “One day he’s at the Grammys winning Album of the Year, then he’s running a marathon in Japan, but he could also be in Rome waiting for the announcement of the new pope.” Another account dedicated to meme-worthy content from the conclave also offered a playful justification for Harry’s presence in the crowd, writing, “He’s a Pope Crave correspondent.”
