George Yeo's experience with the Pope caused me to question the very meaning of life

After former Minister for Foreign Affairs George Yeo stopped by Mothership's Help Desk to discuss his experience working with Pope Francis with us, there was one anecdote that I couldn't help fixating on.

Yeo told us how during one trip to the Vatican, his wife had asked him to get some rosaries blessed by the pontiff — "Singaporeans think that the Holy Father was there waiting to bless rosaries," he joked.

"It gave me a lot of stress, I couldn't say no to my wife," he added.

The opportunity to ask the Pope for such a favour would come at meal times at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a special dormitory built for visiting senior clerics like cardinals and individuals like Yeo, who was working to reform the Vatican's administration at the time.

The Domus' dining hall hosted the dormitory's residents alongside Pope Francis during lunch and dinner.

"I was discussing this with some of the Cardinals whom I sat with at lunchtime. They knew I was under stress, so one of them nudged me and said, 'Go!' So I plucked up my courage."

Yeo nervously approached the leader of the Catholic Church, rosaries in hand, bracing for a rejection — maybe even a chiding for having the audacity to interrupt the Pope's meal.

"I'm not sure if I blamed my wife, but I probably did. I said, 'My wife asked me to have these rosaries blessed by you.'

I expected a glare from him, but not at all."

Instead, without saying a word Pope Francis looked at Yeo and then looked down in prayer, blessing the religious objects. Then he looked back up at Yeo, kindly, and said: "Please pray for me".

"I do not know how I looked, but whatever I looked caused him to repeat, 'Please pray for me. Remember!'" recalled Yeo laughing, still full of appreciation for the surreal nature of that moment.

Humility and the impact with have on others

Now of course we don't know if Pope Francis might have been experiencing some stress in that moment that compelled him to request prayers in return for a blessing, but that incident struck me as a remarkable display of humility.

Here's the head of the Catholic Church asking for help from one of his congregants, and not a cardinal or a highly respected bishop or some sort, but (at least as far as the church hierarchy goes) a regular run-of-the-mill Catholic.

I imagine it's not easy for all men in power to admit that they need help (though if they do, Help Desk accepts submissions anonymously), so that in itself is exceptional.

But Yeo suspects that the Pope's request goes beyond just superficial humility, citing a Vatican source who had once described the pontiff to Yeo as "cunning".

"Which is not surprising to me, because you're working in a very complicated environment," said Yeo. "So if you're not cunning, how can you be a pope? If you're not cunning, how can you be a leader of a country?"

However, that same priest later changed his mind and told Yeo that Pope Francis was "genuinely holy".

"Now, normally, when you assess a person, you may be infatuated... but after a while you get jaded, you begin to notice the defects, the deficiencies. But for him, over a few years, to come to a conclusion that [the Pope] is not only cunning but is genuinely holy, to me, says a lot about Pope Francis."

"So that's how we evaluate people," Yeo continued, "not just on one or two occasions, but over time."

And this time, Yeo mused, was precious, because it is all we have to fulfil what he believes is our purpose here on Earth.

"During that brief moment [when we are alive], how has the world changed? That's the meaning of life — and that meaning is not found in ourselves, but in how others relate to us. Which means in our contributions and how we have changed others."

Catch the full episode of Help Desk, where we talked to George Yeo about working with the Pope to reform the Vatican while also getting advice on how to deal with micro-managers and travel here:

Top image from Mothership