At his Wednesday morning general audience, Pope Leo’s face lit up with an unusually bright smile as he received a unique donation: Proton, a purebred Arabian horse from a prestigious Polish stable. Source: OSV News.
“When I saw your Holiness on a horse in Peru, I immediately took action!” Andrzej Michalski said after he, his son and nephew greeted the Pope yesterday at the Vatican, before giving him the striking white stallion.
The gift is indeed unusual – Proton’s father came from the United States, and his mother was bought from a princess in Jordan. The horse was born in Janów Podlaski, Poland’s most prestigious Arabian horse breeder, and raised by Mr Michalski in seaside Kolobrzeg in northwestern Poland, where he spent 11 years in a family-run stable.
“The Holy Father loves horses, because he rode for miles in Peru and is an excellent horseman,” Mr Michalski said. “When I learned about this, it immediately dawned on me. The Holy Spirit came, and I immediately had the idea and began implementing the procedure to give the Holy Father a horse.”
And Proton is no ordinary horse.
It’s “one that Pope Leo would be completely satisfied with,” Mr Michalski said. He is “a calm, yet beautiful horse because, as we know, Arabians are the most beautiful.”
Receiving the unusual gift, Pope Leo smiled widely.
“He was very happy. He touched us all. He didn’t even want to part with it for long. We accompanied the horse to his Popemobile, together with the Holy Father,” Mr Michalski said, recalling the special moment, adding that “if the Popemobile ever broke down, he could ride his horse into St Peter’s Square.”
Mr Michalski said that if not for it being the general audience, “Pope Leo said he would happily jump on the horse,” and he is “planning to visit Castel Gandolfo to ride with the Holy Father” as “the Pope said there is much more space there than in the Vatican.”
That’s where Proton headed after the Wednesday audience – the Castel Gandolfo stables.
FULL STORY
From Poland with love: Pope Leo reins in a royal Arabian gift (By Paulina Guzik, OSV News)
