KEY POINTS:
How do you hug a Pope?
If you're from Africa, maybe, or somewhere a little more demonstrative, you just leap in.
But if you're Clare Dooley, 30-year-old Catholic youth worker from Christchurch, you resist temptation - though you do shake hands at least three times.
Ms Dooley was one of 12 international World Youth Day pilgrims selected to lunch with Pope Benedict XVI at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney yesterday, happy enough to sit down with him to dine on sweet potato and crusty bread, chicken with baked potatoes and snow peas, and dessert of lemon and passionfruit meringue pie.
But wrapping your arms around the pontifical person was just not on.
"I wanted to give him a big bearhug like some of the other girls," Ms Dooley said. "But I didn't want to put that upon him."
Yesterday's lunch had been preceded by a big and increasingly nervous wait since Bishop Barry Jones called her in Christchurch and told her: "Clare, we need to choose someone to have lunch with the Pope, and all the bishops think it should be you."
"Well," Ms Dooley said, "there was only one answer to that." So yesterday morning, after an early wake-up call from Christchurch breakfast radio, she skipped mass, hung out with some friends, mooched around town a bit, sat in the sun, and tried to keep calm.
Before the Pope arrived, the pilgrims were placed in a room with drawn curtains, which they were instructed to ensure did not move.
They could not resist peeking.
"We weren't supposed to make the curtains move, but we were looking," Ms Dooley said.
In the same room at last, the Pope moved around the table, greeting each pilgrim and taking both hands in his.
"I said, 'I'm Clare from New Zealand,' and he goes, 'Oh, so close toAustralia'."
Ms Dooley said that although Pope Benedict did not use a lot of words, the pilgrims could tell from the look in his eyes, his affection and his taking their hands in his, that he was sincere.
He told them he was excited about what was happening in Sydney, and at the energy and life the young people were bringing with them.
Nor was he intimidating.
"You know there's something special about him, that he's close to God, and he's like being close to your grandfather," Ms Dooley said.
"I didn't feel uncomfortable at all."
They exchanged gifts: Ms Dooley gave the Pope pounamu rosary beads from the West Coast, he gave her a large medallion and rosary beads.
"I felt very emotional, a real excitement that this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that nobody else gets. Not even our bishops get to sit with the Pope for just over an hour and have lunch with him," she said.
