“I joke he might have a priestly calling today,” Michael Hilborn said in a phone interview Monday.
Hilborn and his wife, Erin, knew they wanted to stop by Vatican City to end their Italy trip.
The vacation marked their first as a family of three, Hilborn said.
The couple dreamed of getting their baby blessed by the Pope . . . and with a little bit of divine intervention from other Vatican visitors, it happened on a sunny morning.
The couple had reserved tickets to the weekly papal audience, but were unable to pick them up because of the large crowds.
Without tickets, they still decided to try and sneak a glance of the Chicago-born Pope.
After befriending a group of tourists, they were let into St. Peter’s Square. There, they waited by a barricade, and chatted with nuns until Pope Leo approached in the white popemobile.
“Leo and his crew start taking the corner, and they’re coming our way…and he [the driver] starts to banger the brakes near us” Hilborn said of the once-in-a-lifetime moment. “I just grab James and full on lion kinged him over the rail as far as I could.”
A member of Pope Leo’s team spotted James, who was smartly dressed in a blue American flag sweater. He carried him to the Pope, who blessed him and waved at his overjoyed parents.
“It was such a beautiful, peaceful, warm embrace that was really unimaginable,” Hilborn said. “I cried.”
The couple shared photos of the moment with friends, family, and members of their parish, Gate of Heaven, in South Boston.
After the Pope passed by, Hilborn said, people in the square rushed up to them to meet the baby who was blessed by the Pope.
“It was just reaffirming that being parents to James was God’s plan for our life,” Hilborn said.
Camille Bugayong can be reached at camille.bugayong@globe.com.
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