"Little acts of love" illuminate Papal Visit

"Little Acts Of Love Illuminate Pope’s Visit", says Lorraine V. Murray, reminiscing in the Atlanta Georgia Bulletin:

These were so many big shining moments in his first papal visit to the United States, but one small incident brought me to tears.

It was during the offertory at the huge Mass in Nationals Park, when streams of people came forth to bring the gifts to the pope. There were religious brothers and sisters, a mother and father of nine children, a couple married 69 years and a group of disabled adults.

And quietly sitting at the bottom of the steps leading to the altar was a girl in a wheelchair, wearing a pink dress and with her hair neatly braided. She could not get up the steps, so the pope walked down, leaned over gently, blessed her and gave her a papal rosary.

The cameras didn’t show the expression on her face, but we could see her carefully studying the beads that were intertwined in her hands.

Pope Benedict’s gentle gesture seems exactly in keeping with the man who came to the United States to spread a message of hope.

But one of many "small acts of kindness" as accounted in the article.