Every morning at eight thirty I checked in to the Courtyard of Sixtus V, and then either Sister Tobiana or one of the secretaries, Don Stanislao or Don Mietek, sent me an elevator with the automatically pressed button number 6. The elevator took me straight to the sixth floor, to the roof. I passed the Holy Father’s apartment on the fourth floor, then the secretaries’ rooms on the fifth floor and then I got to the terrace. I would get out of the elevator and started to do my work.
Giuseppe Pelliccioni worked in the Vatican for a total of more than thirty years, of which more than ten years in the immediate vicinity of the Pope. He never thought of asking him for a special audience for himself or for his loved ones. He did not want to trouble him. He knew how busy the Pope was, he saw it every day. He often told himself in his mind that John Paul II had the entire world on his head. At the same time, however, he had the great privilege of meeting the Holy Father every day with his daily, someone would say: tedious and maybe even a little boring work. Therefore, every day was a blessing for him. Giuseppe started working behind the Bronze Gate in November 1981. He came forward because he heard that someone was being sought for the position of gardener.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 127 – 128
