Bulgaria PM Plays Down Italian Visit Gaffes

Bulgaria's prime minister has highly assessed his official visit to Rome and the Vatican, playing down the importance of two mistakes that the hosts made.

“The visit was a big success with lots of useful meetings and the high evaluation that our country received. There were no gaffes,” Boyko Borisov told the morning broadcast of the state TV channel BNT on Tuesday morning.

The comment came a day after a report of the Vatican TV channel confused Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov for the government head of the Republic of Macedonia.

In a report about Borisov’s audience with Pope Benedict XVI dedicated to May 24, the Day of Slavic Script and Bulgarian Culture, the Vatican TV spoke about a Macedonian delegation. The report was published on the German version of the Vatican TV website, and was subsequently changed.

A delegation from the Republic of Macedonia usually follows the Bulgarian delegation with an audience with the Pope.

The Vatican TV report was the second gaffe during the visit of the Bulgarian delegation to Rome and the Vatican.

The first happened at the very beginning of the visit as the Bulgarian delegation was met at the Ciampino airport with a flag that was turned upside down but was quickly fixed by the hosts when the Bulgarian reporters started to take photos.