It is interesting that almost all the people with whom I have talked over for so many years about their first contact with John Paul II, like a mantra, repeat the same words: electrifying look, incredible power that flowed from him – despite the fragility and physical weakness deepening over the years. A similar impression was shared with me by another man who has already spent twenty-three years in the barracks of the Papal Swiss Guard and for whom this environment is like a second family.
His presence among the guards is absolutely indispensable, although on a daily basis he remains in the shadow of his studio located in a small courtyard that leads to the canteen and soldier’s kitchen. This is Ety Cicioni – a tailor of the Papal army. He joined the guards in the distant 1997. A little later, to his great surprise, the loud sound of a landline phone was heard.
– I remember very well, it was Friday, late afternoon. I was closing the doors of the studio and was about to go home for the weekend to Teramo, a province about a hundred kilometers from Rome. The phone rang and I didn’t even want to go back to pick it up. I was even impatient, because I wanted to go and I was afraid that someone would call with a sudden and urgent order.
However, it was a Sister of the Sacred Heart from the Papal apartment, who asked if I would like to come at seven o’clock in the morning to Mass with the Pope.
From the emotions my legs bent under me. I had been working for over a year and a half near him, actually under his windows, in the shadow of the Apostolic Palace, so theoretically I was used to the Pope’s presence nearby, but I had no personal contact with him. And, here is such an opportunity! I was invited along with my fiancée Lucia, my mother, and younger sister.
Of course, we all went, and after the Holy Mass in the private library, the Pope approached each invited person and exchanged a word with him/her. There was something so amazing about it that everything I had prepared to say was gone somewhere and I had a black hole in my head.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 99 – 100
