I have already mentioned how in the first years of his pontificate we literally could not keep up with the Pope. After breaking his hip, he began to limp a little, but hiking – both those in the Alps and those of the one-day sub-Roman – gave him great strength. Sometimes in the last years of his life it happened that the morning before the start of the hike was really hard: the moment I drove up to take him on a trip, I could clearly see that he was weak, bent to the ground, completely without strength … And, in the afternoon, when we were returning from the mountains, he gave the impression that a new spirit had entered him. He was charged with good energy. Contact with nature, peace, silence were for him like a charger for the next intense days. All the more so when it comes to the entire long summer period in the Castel Gandolfo residence.
There on Lake Albano in the sub-Roman hills, there was a completely different world. Usually, the gendarmes were changing, they were on two-week duty, but Missimo Illuminati and I spent the entire three months there with the Pope. In Castel Gandolfo I was the only driver of the Pope. Usually, in the vicinity of the palace itself, he moved on foot, but when he went to the gardens or to the pool, where it was quite far away, I would take him. Together with the Pope, another colleague from our “strong group on the call”, Gianluca, always swam. He also spent the entire summer period in Castel Gandolfo.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 179 – 180
