...this time in the depths of the Vatican. I had been invited to join a small group of journalists for an audience with the pope. It was an occasion not to be missed.

One autumn morning at the end of 2003 we walked past the Swiss Guards, up the beautiful stairway and into the breathtaking reception room. After a short wait the doors behind us were thrown open and a wooden podium-like device was pushed into the room. On either side towered two ushers and in the middle sat a tiny, hunched figure dressed in white.

Slowly he was pushed down the aisle between us, until he reached the front. Here gradually, painfully he was helped to his own chair. Then this small, bent and crippled man courageously gave his address about the responsibilities of journalists. He must have talked for about 15 minutes even though we could hardly hear his mumble.

At the end we were told that the pope would give each of us his blessing. As my turn came to kneel before his chair something made me look up and I found bright, lively periwinkle-blue eyes looking straight into mine. They were the most startling blue I have ever seen. They were questioning, open, gentle eyes that had a twinkle and a smile, as if to say: "Yes, here I am, still alive in this broken old body but if you thought my mind had gone too you had better think again." There was a wistfulness as well, the young eyes of an old man, struggling against a torture of an illness.

As we left we were each given a small, plastic papal-blessed rosary. I left mine unused in the bottom of my bag. Then feeling bad that I had not put it to better use I decided to give it to a devout Catholic from a Buddhist country, a man who would have given anything to have been as close to the pope as I had been. He and his wife had been trying to have a child for many years. He prayed constantly for a baby and had been on numerous pilgrimages. The couple was also undergoing medical treatment for their infertility. So I gave him the rosary for Christmas, explaining from where it came, and thought no more of it. Several months later he came back with a smile from ear to ear; his wife was pregnant. Their daughter was born just before the following Christmas.

So was it the rosary or the treatment? The man is convinced to this day that it was not just the medical treatment. If the pope had known he would probably have greeted the news with a knowing twinkle in his lively blue eyes.