The elevator of the Apostolic Palace is a small, completely separate world. Maybe one and a half by two and a half meters, beautiful, all in a walnut tree. How many unheard-of things we could hear in this little elevator. How many words were spoken there that determined the history of the world in the years and decades that followed! Of course, there was an unwritten agreement that we had to keep a secret. I didn’t even talk to my wife about many matters.
The elevator is also associated with memories of extremal situations, when suddenly someone felt unwell. This was when Woody Allen arrived at the Vatican. He suffers from claustrophobia. For special guests there is no alternative way to get to the top.
As soon as the famous director entered the elevator with me, he got a panic attack, he began to shake. The interpreter, who was standing with us in the elevator, exclaimed: “Please do not close the door!” Allen went out and went up the stairs to the Pope; he was unable to take the elevator. There were others who were so stressed about the imminent meeting with the Pope that they took my hand, squeezed me tightly and held me to encourage themselves.
I remember when Jacques Chirac came. He came ahead of time. He sat in our living room, waiting for an audience, and I had to clean the back of his jacket because he required it. I used a special brush for this purpose. When Chirac was ready, he put on his own medals, as was usually done by presidents accepted by the Pope, he thanked me and got into the elevator and I took him upstairs.
It is interesting that many leaders, generally very proud, self-confident, unmoved in various situations, gave the impression of being tense, intimidated, when they sat in my living room and waited for an audience with John Paul II. They seemed confused, small. And, the Pope from the first moments disarmed them with his simplicity, normality.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 42 – 43
