24-04-2025
Blessed by the Pope: When The National travelled on papal plane ‘Shepherd One' with Pope Francis
What was he like? This is the question I'm always asked years after I met Pope Francis, shook his hand and asked him to bless rosary prayer beads for my Catholic friends and family. It was the second-ever trip to the Gulf by the head of the Roman Catholic Church and I was covering the Pope's four-day visit to Bahrain in November 2022 for The National. There was a calmness about Pope Francis, an air of serenity around him and a sense that he was always fully present in the moment as he greeted each one of the more than 60 journalists on board the plane from Rome to Bahrain. We were on board Shepherd One, the name the Italian media gave to chartered planes the Pope flew on when visiting countries. The pontiff, then 85, was brought on board in a wheelchair and walked slowly to the back of plane leaning on a cane to meet the press after we took off from Rome's Fiumicino Airport. There was a polite scrummage – we were, after all, in the presence of the Pope – to get the best first shots of the leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics then recovering from a knee ailment. Speaking in Italian, translated by his aides, Pope Francis made it clear he had time to meet all media on board. It was the first time on a papal flight for me and my colleague Amy McConaghy, The National's multimedia producer, and we thought it was the start of a press conference. We soon realised as per protocol, this was an informal meeting with the media on the Rome-Manama journey and he would take formal questions on the return to Italy. On past flights, the Pope usually walked around but this time he sat in the front and patiently spent time asking each person where they were from and the media group they represented. As journalists we are used to thrusting microphones in front of world leaders and wildly scribbling notes, not standing in a queue to say hello. But this journey was different – veteran journalists, who travelled more than 100 times with the first non-European Pope and extensively covered his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI, said the experience never got old. We watched as journalists queued up to bless books, paintings, mementoes, asked him to say a prayer for ailing relatives. I fished out a box of rosaries I had bought in Rome as I knew it would mean the world to my friends to have the Pope bless this. He did so with a warm smile after asking who it was for and where I was from. It's been three years since that trip and the photographs capture distinctive memories of Pope Francis's gold, blue and red insignia embroidered on the headrest flaps. His aides told us that a portrait of Mary is placed in the front where the Pope is seated and accompanied him on all his journeys. It was an experience I cherish – that's my answer to the question I've been asked. I remember kind eyes, a firm handshake, an overall sense of peace and the measured tones in which the late Pope Francis answered every question. The video The National produced about the papal flight went viral with people from Calgary to Chennai asking if they could have the rosary beads. One message remains with me as it mirrors his title as the 'People's Pope.' 'I remember your meeting with our beloved Papa Francis,' said one reader. 'I feel I've learnt so much from him during his papacy just by the way he lived his life.' The papal flight was the start of The National's extensive coverage. As media we were close at hand to record him kiss babies lifted up to the Popemobile in packed stadiums and touch the hands of cancer survivors overjoyed to watch him lead the Mass. We saw first-hand his unflagging energy despite a painful knee that kept him in a wheelchair. His schedule ran the press to the ground from 8am stretching past 9pm daily. But behind his smile and calm, there was a clear resolve to reiterate his message of interfaith dialogue and for the urgent need to extend a hand of friendship to strangers, new neighbours and migrants – words that will remain relevant well after his death on Monday. There was a genuineness in the connection he had with people who lined up for hours to greet him and called him, 'My Pope.' Over those long hours, the Pope drew energy from his meetings with excited schoolchildren. 'Dear young people, we need you. We need your creativity, your dreams and your courage, your charm and your smiles, your contagious joy and that touch of craziness that you can bring to every situation, which helps to break us out of our stale habits and ways of looking at things,' he said. 'As Pope, I want to tell you: never lose the courage to dream big and to live life to the full.' And as promised, on the flight back to Rome, we had an in-flight press conference where the Pope gave a fascinating insight into the making of the Document of Human Fraternity signed in Abu Dhabi in 2019. He shared how when sharing lunch with Dr Ahmed Al Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, a divine force guided him to write the document that aims to open a path of harmony between all faiths. 'It emerged during a friendly lunch and that is a big thing,' he said. 'It seems right that you know how the Lord inspired this path … You can't understand it otherwise, because none of us had this in mind. It was something that came from God.'
