After returning, I took all my belongings to the Pope’s private warehouse in the Courtyard of Sixtus V. Already at that time there was Sister Maria, a Polish woman from the Congregation of the Virgins of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who remains employed in the same place to this day, during the pontificate of Pope Francis. When I delivered all the items upstairs, Father Stanisław came to the warehouse. I told him right away that it was important to remember that among the food products there was also a live dog… Father Dziwisz looked at me with disarming eyes and asked briefly: “Pietro, you don’t like dogs?” I looked at him very surprised and replied that quite the opposite. And, he said: “The Holy Father, as soon as he saw him yesterday, said that it would be a good gift for Pietro!” And, so the whole adventure ended. The dog came to my family and quickly settled in with us.
Often on Sunday afternoon, when I was leaving with the Pope to visit the parishes of Rome, my wife and our three daughters came to the Gate of the Holy Office to wave at him. They stood together and one of them always held this dog in her arms, and the Pope himself immediately noticed them. In Rome, we most often moved in a Mercedes with an opening roof. The Pope leaned out of the car, waved to my ladies, and to me, laughing to the hilt, he said in a half-voice: “Pietro! Your wife is watching you.”
John Paul II, like the current Pope Francis, used to say that not only women and men, but also animals have the breath of God (un soffio divino) in them, he loved them and always reacted vividly to them. The twitter of various species of birds accompanied him during walks in the Vatican Gardens. What is unusual, it was during his pontificate that parrots settled behind the Bronze Gate, which one day the Holy Father received as a gift and commissioned them to find a place in the oasis of greenery on the Vatican hill. The two individuals were spontaneously joined by other Roman parrots that escaped from the cage, and now there is a whole large colony. There are also hummingbirds. To the joy of walking there every day, despite the very old age and physical weakness of Pope Emeritus Benedict, there are really many multi-colored birds today. They settled in the back of the railway station.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 238 – 239
