Playtime at the Vatican

Pope John Paul II plays with 3-year-old Simone Roggen during a private audience at the Vatican in 1984.

A New Zealander has fond memories of the day his daughter played hide-and-seek with Pope John Paul II.

Twins Simone and Pascal Roggen were aged 3 when, with their parents Oscar and Hazel, they met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. Mr Roggen's brother, then a member of the Pope's private army, the Swiss Guard, "pulled strings" to arrange the visit.

Simone Roggen, now a 24-year-old violinist, said last night from Switzerland, where she is studying, that she was considering going to Rome for the Pope's funeral.
Her father said the family had a private audience with the Pope in 1984, one that soon made headlines in Europe.

"The Pope as nobody knows him," German magazine Bunte headlined a picture of the red-robed Pope reaching out kindly to the red-frocked and playful Simone.

Mr Roggen, of Mairangi Bay, said his children were at first overawed before the family received their papal blessing.

"My wife told them he's a man in strange clothes. They had never seen someone like that before.

"They were a little over-awed at the beginning. Simone was hiding between my legs looking up, cheekily."

After the audience ended, the Pope left the room and in the adjacent hallway was helped on with his red robe.

"He saw her coming with a rosary in her mouth - we all got rosaries - and she ran after him. He turned around and said, 'Come to me'. She wasn't quite sure, then he opened his coat and she ran away."

Ms Roggen was too young at the time to have remembered that first meeting, but she treasures the photos.

She met the Pope again, briefly, at the Auckland Domain when he visited New Zealand in 1986 but there was no time for her to remind him of their game.