00:00British consciousness?
00:02Well, I think it's been pretty well covered and very generously,
00:05and it's difficult to sort of, you know, nothing's jumped out of the page,
00:10as it were, sort of, you know, God hasn't been said.
00:12But I think, you know, one of the extraordinary things,
00:15and I obviously experienced it at a personal level,
00:18is how Francis, despite being a huge global spiritual figure
00:24who spoke truth to power, who met all sorts of heads of state,
00:30there's so many, so many personal anecdotes of individuals
00:36who were touched by him on an individual basis.
00:40And I speak to you as someone who had that experience
00:42because on my 40th anniversary, I went with my wife
00:46and I had a kind of private audience with him.
00:49And I'll never forget, he took our hands and just looked at us
00:56with that extraordinary face of his, which, full of light,
01:00full of engagement, full of compassion.
01:03And he just asked us straight away, which of you has been most patient?
01:09Well, I mean, what kind of better phrase to address to anyone
01:14who's been married with all its ups and downs
01:17to ask which of you has been more patient?
01:20Which left both my wife and I absolutely gobsmacked.
01:23And, of course, we were both sort of trying to point at each other
01:26in a moment of generosity, which, obviously, he wanted to elicit from us.
01:32But you have a lot of those stories, you know.
01:35He was particularly good with kids.
01:38I was once with him holding a baby because I was in the front row
01:42and there was a parent with a baby 20 rows behind
01:46who'd been throwing the baby almost like a kind of basket
01:50over the heads of everyone.
01:51Finally, it landed in my arms just at the moment
01:55when Pope Francis was going past.
01:57And I held the baby up and he ordered the Popemobile to stop
02:01and he leaned over and he just touched the baby on the head
02:06and I could see the faces of his parents sort of registering this moment
02:12as something that they would never forget.
02:14Yeah, it's incredible.
02:15And, Jimmy, we're now seeing this adapted Popemobile
02:19moving through the streets of Rome.
02:22And, Caroline, as you're just hearing from Jimmy
02:25about how this Pope had a particularly special connection with people,
02:30it's no surprise to see the police having to line these streets
02:34to hold back these deep crowds.
02:37No, it's not.
02:38And when Jimmy said this was very reminiscent
02:42of the late Princess of Wales, Diana,
02:45that was the exact same thought came into my head
02:49watching this footage.
02:52And it's actually very new because this is the first Pope
02:57to be buried outside of the Vatican in 120 years.
03:03And it seems strangely moving and fitting,
03:08even though it's outside of Vatican protocols,
03:11because normally what happens is we have the papal funeral
03:14and then the burial is always a very quiet and private affair.
03:19I mean, the Vatican does normally release pictures afterwards
03:21and I should imagine that they,
03:23although the internment in St Mary Major will itself be private,
03:27I imagine that they...
Comments