Six Years...

have passed already since the Servant of God, soon to be beatified, Holy Father John Paul II, has left us and went to the Father's House in Heaven. Six years! Though it seems still as if this traumatic event happened just a few days ago... For those among us who were blessed with opportunities of meeting the Holy Father in person, today those moments spring up back in our living memories, bringing a lot of emotions, fond feelings, interesting anecdotes and smiles on our faces...


Out of several occasions on which I was blessed with meeting the Holy Father and chat with him (leaving out the pilgrimages to Poland in which I participated as a lay faithful and later on as a seminarian), today I would like to share with you the very first time I met him. It was in January 1991, shortly before my virgin flight to Tanzania to begin my missionary career.

It was my very first time in Rome and Vatican as well. I was a complete rookie. When priests whom I asked to help me to get the opportunity to meet the Holy Father and concelebrate a Holy Mass in his private chapel in the Vatican Palazzo Apostolico, I was informed to my heart's gladness that I will join an American-Australian groups which were scheduled for the morning Mass with the Holy Father presiding...

I described that first moment in my autobiography book 'Między Taborem a Golgotą'. I still remember that Holy Mass and the way he was celebrating it, fully focused appearing to me as a huge mountain of prayer and adoration...

After the Mass, all participants were invited to a hall where the Holy Father came to walk around and greet each one of us and have a word or two. When my turn came, his personal secretary, Mons. Stanisław Dziwisz told the Holy Father that I was a new missionary, on my way to Tanzania to join other missionaries from Archdiocese of Kraków, already working there. The Holy Father smiled broadly and told me that he was in Tanzania just a few months ago (September 1990) in the Land of Kilimanjaro as he put it himself. I asked for his blessing which he gladly imparted on me.

And this was my very first moment when I got a chance to shake hands with him, speak with him, get his personal blessing and most of all - to celebrate the Holy Mass presided by him...

I wonder what are you memories and recollections...your magic moments with the Holy Father John Paul II?...