Pius XII Photo

I saw this photo in a post about Pius XII at Unam Sanctam. In a lull in the conversation I ended up sending it to a friend on AIM. She's not a religious person, but I think by now my friends expect these sort of random things from me. I sort of thought she might like it because she has a bird. She commented that she thought he looked young in this picture and so I went out on a search for a caption to the picture so I could find out when it was taken. Since he was Pope from 1939 - 1958 the picture could have been taken at any time. I never did find out when the picture was taken, but I found a site where the picture had a little paragraph with it.



Though as Pope he would usually eat his meals alone, that changed somewhat one day after the papal gardener found a helpless bird, which had been injured in the garden. Knowing the Pontiff's love for nature, the gardener brought the bird to his apartment. Pacelli was fascinated, helped nurse the bird back to health and decided to keep it in his apartment. He named her Gretel. As soon as she was fully recovered, she was given several companions. While the Pope ate, the birds were released from their cages. Twittering, the birds would perch on his shoulder or on the table where they had their own small dishes of seeds. Thereafter at mealtime he was vicariously back in the natural world he knew in the summers of his youth.