(…) the last door, on which wooden boards had to be put, was in the Belvedere Courtyard. The Prefect of the Papal House, together with the Commander of the Swiss Guard and the Head of the Governorate, at that time, Marquis of Sacchetti, were still conducting a control tour. At the last moment, at 4:55 p.m., all three reached the courtyard, and literally a moment later, punctually at seventeen o’clock, they gave the order to close this last entrance. Whoever was inside was lucky; whoever stayed outside no longer had a chance to go inside.
In 1978, the Polish Cardinal, Karol Wojtyła, was late. As it turned out later, a few steps before the Vatican, his car broke down. The engine went out on Borgo Pio, and the Cardinal had to cover the last piece of the road on foot: in front of the gate of St. Anne and further to the Belvedere Courtyard to enter the palace and take part in the conclave. With a quick step, out of breath, he reached the door at the last moment. We stood there with the Prefect and other people, setting up wooden boards in the gates. In three minutes we were supposed to close.
Wojtyła saw it and with a smile and a twinkle in his eye said: “Well, how is it, you will not let the future Pope in?”
A slight surprise after these words was mixed with a volley of laughter from the Prefect and the Commandant, and I myself thought in disbelief: what is he saying?
As soon as Cardinal Wojtyła went inside, the Prefect of the Papal Household said for the last time, firmly: “Now is really the time. We’re closing.” And, the conclave began. The second one that year. It was exactly seventeenth o’clock, on October 14, 1978.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 24 – 25
