Question 3.52

3.52 What do you remember about your first audience with John Paul II?

My appointment took place in August 1979. In the following weeks, I came to Rome to greet John Paul II and to express to him my gratitude for his confidence. Together with the bishop of the third diocese of Guinea, I asked for an audience. Inasmuch as Sékou Touré did not look favorably on my appointment, this meeting with the pope was very important. Upon our arrival at the Vatican, in September 1979, the officials at the Secretariat of State told us that the pope could not receive us in a private audience because of an overcrowded agenda. … For us, considering the Guinean government, that was unthinkable. We absolutely had to return to Guinea with a photo of our conversation with the pontiff! Without a meeting with John Paul II, Sékou Touré would have scorned our episcopal authority since the pope himself did not take the trouble to meet with us. … I begged the pope’s staff, but there seemed to be no possibility. By chance, the nuncio stationed in Dakar, Bishop Giovanni Mariani, was in Rome. I was able to talk with him to explain my problem. As someone well acquainted with the authoritarian regime of Sékou Touré, he quickly understood the full extent of the misunderstanding. The situation was serious because Sékou Touré was perfectly capable of throwing us into prison if the pope did not give us some recognition.

The nuncio then advised me to write immediately to the pope, explaining to him the details of my dangerous situation. He personally guaranteed that my letter would be delivered into the hands of the Holy Father. One day later, when I was with the Marianist Sisters in Monteverde Nuovo, the pope’s secretary telephoned me to inform me that John Paul II expected us, Bishop Philippe Kourouma and myself, to celebrate Mass with him the following day. You can imagine my astonishment and my excitement. … At seven o’clock in the morning, we found him in his private chapel. I was seized with unimaginable emotion. I prayed a great deal for the men and women who had made me the Christian, the priest, and the bishop who found himself, contrary to all expectations, in the pope’s chapel, in particular for my family in Ourous, the Holy Ghost Fathers, and Archbishop Tchidimbo, who had been ruined by nine years in prison.

Then, after the service, the pope asked us to have breakfast with him. As we were about to leave, he decided that we could take all the necessary photos. On that September morning I spent more than an hour with John Paul II. During the meal he asked me my age. I told him that I was thirty-four years old. He then let out a great burst of laughter and exclaimed: “But then you are a baby bishop! Un vescovo Bambino!” There was no arguing with that; I was at that time the youngest bishop in the world. …