With the Pope and his “family” I also became connected by… Christmas tree. I remember how John Paul II decided, according to the Polish tradition, to put a big living tree in Vatican. People in Italy felt that it expressed a sense of interpersonal closeness, a homely atmosphere, not just a banal annual custom. This Christmas tree, as well as the nativity scene on the St. Peter’s Square, was a hit. In the beginning, Christmas trees always came from my hometown. I arranged it. In the Veneto area, my relatives and neighbors had plantations. From there we brought trees, not only the largest ones to the square, but also many smaller ones to various interiors in the Apostolic Palace, including the Papal apartment itself. I met the Holy Father many times when we were preparing Christmas trees in his palace. I put one in the large living room on the third floor next to his apartment: it was beautiful, majestic, always about five or six meters high. I took the second one to the refectory and placed a small nativity scene next to it, which I always made myself. I installed another nativity scene on the left side of the corridor by the elevator that led from the Pope’s apartment to the private Courtyard of Sixtus V. I brought figurines made by a great artist in my northern Italy, in Veneto, and I arranged them all myself. When I was preparing the nativity scene, not only priest Stanisław and the sisters came to look, but also the Holy Father himself looked in from behind the doorframe. He loved those moments of pre-Christmas preparations, so ordinary. He would come up, look at me and say to me, “You’re a pretty clever guy!” And, with a smile he passed on.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
Pages: 79 – 80
