– In the summer of 2004 we were still in the Aosta Valley, it was certainly the last time, a few months before the death of John Paul II. To the very top, to the house where we lived, we drove by car. The Pope was already very weak. We also went on small trips deep into the forest by car. We were accompanied by the local forest guards. In a beautiful viewing place, we unfolded a comfortable armchair, we carried the Pope there from the car so he could sit, pray, rest, enjoy the mountains.
From the Vatican to the Aosta Valley we flew in a special military plane, which was at our disposal by the Italian Air Force, and on the spot we were traveling in cars especially for this purpose taken to the hatch. We used the helicopter sporadically, only a few times, and mainly in the nineties, when the Holy Father was in better shape. Then sometimes we would fly to the glacier, he loved it… I remember such a sight: the blinding white of the snow around and a man standing alone in white, in large white snow boots, looking up, above the tops of the mountains, towards the sky … We waited in a small distance, we left him alone, for his one-on-one conversation with God.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
