POPE BENEDICT XVI
Like everybody else, I too was surprised to hear that Pope Benedict was resigning. l knew him personally, though I have never been a member of the Roman Catholic Church. I still cherish the beautiful memory of our oneto-one meeting at the Senate Hall at St. Peter’s, where he spent 20 minutes with me, all the time holding my hand in his both hands, on 21st October, 2005, Friday, between 4.45 - 5.05 p.m., just six months after his assuming office as the new pope. Cardinal Toppo, the then President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI), had arranged that audience with the Holy Father. I subsequently also learnt that it was unusual for the pope to spend so much of time with a non-Catholic lay man, as he did with me, when the cardinals and the Archbishops were waiting for him in the lower part of the Senate Hall for a scheduled meeting with the pope. That only goes to show how much he cared for the Church in different parts of the world, more so in a country like India, where Christians are being subjected to persecutions in different parts of the country.
