Cajun Chef’s Polish Client Has a Very Catholic Taste

--Cajun chef John Folse picked up a new customer last week, when he prepared a Vatican state dinner for Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals. Folse said he now will be sending a bucket of seafood gumbo each month to Pope John Paul II. “Here’s a guy from Poland running the Vatican, and he loves seafood gumbo from Louisiana!” Folse said after his return home. “ ‘Gumbah’--that’s what he called it.” Folse said he met the Pope, who did not attend the dinner, during a private audience. Folse and Ed LeBlanc, executive chef at Lafitte’s Landing Restaurant in Donaldsonville, La., prepared the meal of gumbo, catfish, alligator sausage, grilled duck and other Cajun dishes for 90 church officials.

--Should the Pope be interested in sampling some unusual pasta, he could check out John A. Zaccaro Jr.’s latest endeavor. Zaccaro, the son of former vice presidential candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro, and his partner, Karen Saccone, operate The Ravioli Store in New York City’s Little Italy. Their shop specializes in a different kind of Italian food: Ravioli stuffed with pumpkin, black beans, walnut pesto, smoked salmon mousse or catfish. “None of this is traditional Italian,” said Zaccaro, who started the business after serving a community-service sentence for a drug offense in Middlebury, Vt. His ravioli are also sold at restaurants and specialty grocers.

--India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Mother Teresa in the Calcutta hospital where she is recovering from a heart attack. Doctors said the 79-year-old Roman Catholic nun, still under intensive care in Woodlands Nursing Home, was feeling “much better” and was responding well to antibiotics and a temporary pacemaker. Gandhi and his wife, Sonia, flew from New Delhi to see Mother Teresa, who won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor in Calcutta. During a 10-minute visit in her hospital room, Mother Teresa put her arms around Gandhi and told him: “I have seen you as a boy and now you have grown up,” according to administrator Deba Prosad Barooah. “I was getting quite anxious about her health, and now I am slightly relieved to see her talking and cheerful,” Gandhi said later.