He was one of those people in the Vatican who I have always associated with the Holy Father. During the audiences, during the celebrations on the St. Peter’s Square, but also outside the walls of the Vatican, I saw them almost always together. It was an indispensable element of the most extraordinary vehicle in the world, which the entire world looked at every time the Pope appeared. And, although probably almost no one was watching him, sitting behind the wheel, because everyone’s eyes were fixed on John Paul II, for me he was important. He was “one of us”, he gave a sense of security. Always the same, unchanging.
– I drove him by car thousands of times, hundreds of times I drove him around the St. Peter’s Square during Wednesday general audiences or liturgical celebrations. It was my everyday life. Despite this, whenever we left the Bell Gate – the famous L’Arco delle Campane – and drove between sectors, hearing the waves of increasingly strong, more and more intense applause of tens of thousands of believers, I had chill down my spine and goosebumps … I never got used to it, these ovations did not become a norm for me, each time it was an incredibly strong experience. With all his fragility, especially in the last years of his life, John Paul II filled me and the crowds of the faithful with so much strength and energy that it is difficult to even describe.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 216 – 217
