For many years, I played soccer with the Canadian Military National Team.
We competed against the armed forces of other countries to nurture understanding and peace among nations, under the banner of the International Military Sports Council (CISM).
In the early days, CISM tournaments took place all over the world as single-sport events.
But 1995 was a banner year for CISM.
It was 50 years after the war and the 50th anniversary of NATO, so CISM decided to bring all of the sports together into one event called the CISM Military World Games.
And what better place to host the 1st CISM Military World Summer Games than Rome, Italy?
For Canada to be one of the qualifying soccer teams, we needed to beat out the United States and Suriname in South America.
While in Rome, Pope John Paul II offered a private session for the CISM athletes, so hundreds of us were taken on buses to the Vatican, where we were herded into a large room filled with bench seats.
We were a noisy bunch, but when the Pope entered the room, everyone became quiet.
The Pope sat in a chair in front of a microphone, with a Swiss guard on either side of him standing at ease.
The Pope spoke for about an hour, in various languages.
It was rumoured he spoke 14 languages and I think I heard all of them.
He was quite frail already in 1995, though he would still live another ten years, and there were sometimes long stretches of silence between periods of speaking.
In those moments, we all held our breath.
The Pope looked so frail, many of us feared the worst.
But the Swiss guards, who no doubt worked directly with the Pope regularly, seemed unperturbed.
When Pope John Paul II was finished, his guests were offered to get in line to receive a private blessing.
When it was my turn, I stepped forward to the edge of the thigh-high glass barrier, and looked at the Pope nestled so delicately between his young, fit Swiss guards.
The Pope raised his eyes to me, made the sign of the cross, and said a few words that I did not understand, likely in Latin.
And then it was done.
I had received a personal blessing from the Pope.
