It was the second day of Pope Francis’ visit to the United Arab Emirates, and Sally Chan Mallari was almost deadbeat. Being a member of the team in charge of His Holiness visit, she was practically running here and there making sure all the nuts and bolts were covered.
On February 4, Sally didn’t expect that one of the errands her boss asked her to do would change her life.
“I was instructed by boss to meet the personal secretary of the Pope,” Sally said in an interview online. She was referring to Fr. Yoannis Lahzi Gaid, a Coptic priest who is the personal secretary of Pope Francis.
“My boss wanted to give something to Fr. Yoannis and he wanted me to go to the Presidential Palace.”
“So I went to the Presidential Palace and saw Fr. Yoannis. He told me he would come back to me. So I waited at the door, together with the Vatican Security and Palace Protocol. Then I saw Fr. Yoannis. To my surprise, he was coming out together with the Pope!”
She was already in tears and a member of the UAE Presidential Protocol was filming her.
“Stop crying,” the protocol officer told her.
“I can’t help it,” Sally said as she tried to hide from the camera.
Then when Pope Francis came out, she greeted him, took his hand and kissed it several times.
On video, the Pope was visibly surprised and gave his blessings to Sally. The pontiff also gifted her a white rosary.
Sally intimated to The Filipino Times what she told Pope Francis
“I asked for forgiveness for all my sins. And I told the Pope to bless the UAE. Because of UAE, the Pope was able to visit here.”
“Til now, I still can’t explain how I feel. It was mixed emotion. Because I was practically sleepless with all the preparation (of the State visit), then there’s joy when I saw him. All my hard work, it was really worth it,” she said.
Sally, a 40-year-old mother of two and widowed for 14 years, has been working in Dubai, UAE for 15 years.
She refused to disclose the identity of her employer, but she felt so blessed to be at the “right place, at the right time.”
The video of Sally’s encounter was posted on her Facebook account and has gone viral with close to 200,000 views, that even BBC Arabic Live reported it.
