– I remember how one day the car of the Holy Father broke down. The audience in the Paul VI Hall had just ended and the Pope was supposed to return to the Apostolic Palace. The Prefect of the Papal Household was already sitting in his car; I was also ready sitting behind the steering wheel. The order according to the protocol was such that we waited for the car with the Pope to leave to go directly behind him. It seemed strange to me that the Pope had been sitting in the back seat of his black Mercedes for some time and the limousine was not moving. The engine broke. A quick decision was made. John Paul II, without waiting for them to repair his car, was to get into us, because – as he himself half-jokingly, half seriously after a while said – “we were going in the same direction anyway”. It was then that I drove the Pope for the first time. And, I must admit that although I saw him almost every day up close, this time it was a completely different emotion. The Holy Father got on with Father Dziwisz and immediately said to me by name: “Ooo, Pietro!” in his deep, low voice… And, then we talked all the way, from the Paul VI Hall to the Apostolic Palace. Cigarettes were very strongly felt in the car and the Pope jokingly said to the Prefect that he probably smokes like a locomotive. He was always very cheerful, very direct; he joked, talked, never left a man aside, took great care that no one felt rejected or not noticed by him. We stopped at the Court of St. Damasus, from where everyone was departing in their own directions.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 233- 234
