The last months of his life were a very difficult time for me. The Pope was less and less able to express with his voice what he needed. The last time I drove him in my life was when we were going to the Gemelli Polyclinic. Particularly poignant, however, was the earlier journey – the return from this hospital after the penultimate stay of the Pope, in February 2005. It was evening and the Pope wanted to return to the Vatican in an illuminated papamobile. Earlier on television it was said that the Pope would return to the Vatican from the Gemelli Polyclinic that evening, so people were already waiting at the hospital itself, and then, when the news spread that a papamobile was coming, they spontaneously went out into the streets of Rome along the entire route. In the evening, the Pope was going through the city and blessed all these people. We drove all over Via della Conciliazione. The faithful also began to gather on the St. Peter’s Square. We drove through the square and then through the Bell Gate behind the Basilica, up to the Apostolic Palace… It was his eloquent farewell to the Eternal City, which he loved very much.
And, at the very end, in mid-March, he did not return from the hospital with me in a car, but in a special bus. He was in such a condition that he had to be brought into a car with a special wheelchair, and for this purpose a bus was used, which for years had been used by the disabled Cardinal Andrzej Maria Deskur. Massimo Illuminati, one of the closest and most faithful gendarmes who always stood by the Pope, brought him home in this bus.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
Pages: 256 – 257
