È ancora bagnato. (It’s still wet.)
Marcel Riedi, Swiss Guard, had accepted my proffered Vatican identity card as, for the first time unaccompanied, I approached the entrance to the Apostolic Palace, residence of the Pope and location of the Holy See’s most sensitive offices. He scrutinized my card inside and out, then held it by a corner and shook it at arm’s length: È ancora bagnato.
It had been issued the day before. I was new to my job as priest secretary to Cardinal William Baum, and His Eminence had taken me around the Vatican, to offices and entrances that I would need to know to assist him in fulfilling his job. This time, though, he was inside at a meeting, and I was alone, coming to get him for the ride home. He needed assistance simply in getting around. The Swiss Guard, impressive in his most excellent striped uniform and confident in his authority, had stopped me to check my credentials. È ancora bagnato: He was totally messing with me. I was such a newbie! We both laughed.
Marcello and I became quite friendly over time, as I was frequently in and out of the places he guarded. Several years into my service there, as I walked alone along some frescoed corridor, he stopped me. Does your man speak Polish? he asked me, referring to Cardinal Baum. I told him he did not, and asked why. Well, he was engaged to be married to a Polish girl, and had arranged for the wedding to be at Saint Stephen of the Ethiopians, a small fifth-century church at the foot of the Vatican gardens right behind Saint Peter’s Basilica. Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul II’s secretary and very Polish, had agreed to celebrate the nuptial Mass. But the Holy Father had accepted, at the last minute, an invitation to visit some distant country, and Archbishop Dziwisz was obliged to accompany him, precisely at the time of the wedding.
Marcello was desperately looking for some Vatican prelate who could help him out at short notice. I wished him the best. A month or two later, next I saw him, I asked about the wedding: Who’d you get? Ratzinger, he answered.
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A few days after the election of Benedict XVI to the Chair of Peter, I had to run an errand to a liturgical-goods shop a few blocks from where I lived and even closer to the apartment where Cardinal Ratzinger had lived for the previous twenty-five years. When I went in, the elegant older Spanish ladies who ran the place all leapt up and gathered around me excitedly. They had seen the conclave and the presentation of the new Pope on the loggia of the Basilica. They were thrilled, and they all had stories about their neighbor.
They said that everyone in the neighborhood had been sharing their enthusiasm for the new Pontiff and had tales of their personal encounters with him; not only the church-goods shopkeepers, but also the grocer, the baker, the fruit vendor, the office-supply shop keeper, and the one I remember best, the mailman.
They shared how he had told them that every time he had encountered the Cardinal Prefect in the street, His Eminence had doffed his hat and greeted him, “Buon giorno, Signor Postino.” (Good day, sir mailman.) And the Postino had objected: But Eminenza, I should doff my hat to you! And the Cardinal had simply replied, But it is important that I greet you, Signor Postino!, and doffed his hat again. The Spanish ladies retold the mailman’s story with breathless delight.
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After the Cardinals in the Conclave of 2005 had chosen him Successor to Peter, Benedict invited the Cardinals to remain one more night together in the Domus Sanctae Martae, where they had been cloistered, then proceed together to the Sistine Chapel for the first Holy Mass of his pontificate. This was the third morning they were in the guest house, and everyone was now familiar with the routine, but there was clearly a buoyancy and excitement among the assembled, whereas before there had been seriousness and concentration. As I passed through the lobby after brushing my teeth downstairs (long story), the elevator doors opened and out stepped the new Pope, on his way to breakfast. It was his first morning in the familiar white cassock and sash. He saw me, smiled warmly, and greeted me as a friend.
Monsignor Smith
