Not so long ago there was a meeting of young people from the Diocese of Rome with the Pope on the St. Peter’s Square, here in the Vatican. We gathered in a group with other Vatican employees, with gendarmes who remembered the old times well, and suddenly I recalled a similar meeting from a dozen or so years ago – those unforgettable moments when John Paul II gathered such large crowds at the end of his life, as an old man. And, we began to comment among ourselves: “Well, those were the times!”
Ety Cicioni remembers above all the warmth of John Paul II. (…)
– The most exciting moment for me was when my wife and I went to John Paul II with our newborn son Matteo. It was May 2002. It was then that I really realized how much he had in his heart families, children, young people, how much he valued them. With extraordinary affection he took my child in his arms, although he was already aching with an illness.
And, at the beginning of my work in the Vatican, one evening at the beginning of May 1998 was particularly memorable – the first celebration of the annual oath of young guardsmen since I started this work – when John Paul II came to the chapel of the guards. On the ground stood three coffins… With the bodies of Commander Alois Estermann, his wife, and the guard who shot them and himself. I was there inside. For all guards, the spontaneous appearance of the Pope was a gesture of great support after this tragic event, inexplicable and shocking. (…)
During that mourning prayer, I stood in the chapel at the back, close to the stairs leading to the mezzanine, and I thought to myself that in life many situations are completely unpredictable. Even in a place like the world behind the Bronze Gate.
The Pope knelt frozen in prayer. He immersed himself in it to the end despite great physical suffering. This was evident both during the Masses in the private chapel and in every place where he appeared. It is impossible to describe the power of his prayer.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
Pages: 118 – 120
