From the Vatican, John Paul II slipped away dressed in a white cassock and a black coat imposed on it. But soon after, as soon as we left the Vatican walls, we stopped and the Pope stayed only in the shirt and trousers that he had under his cassock. For a few good years, when he was in great physical shape, he was walking in the mountains like a chamois; wearing sports shoes and an air rifle imposed on his shirt…
From the beginning of my life behind the Bronze Gate, I have heard about a group of lay people from the Holy Father’s immediate friends, who were like family members for him and made the moments spent together a substitute for the old Krakow times. But, it was only over the years that I got to know these people better, gradually discovering their noble simplicity and great humanity, as if the John Paul II’s being penetrated naturally and subtly throughout their everyday life.
Vatican gendarmes. And, exactly five of them: Massimo, Egildo, Gianluca, Claudio and Valentino. Always the same. It was they who organized the famous Tuesday trips to the nature beyond the cramped Vatican walls, within a radius of about a hundred kilometers from Rome. During these trips, they provided the Pope with security, but above all they enabled him priceless moments of a break among the mountains with the sound of the forests.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
