"We had learnt that he came from Poland. My impression was rather that he had left his nets on the shore of a lake and that he came straight from Galilee, on the heels of the apostle Peter. I had never felt so close to the Gospel. For the words 'Be not afraid' were doubtless addressed to a world in which man fears man, fears life as much as, if not more than, death, fears the savage forces he holds prisoner, fears everything, nothing and sometimes even his own fear; but they were also, or might have been, the exhortation of a disciple in the dawn of Christianity to his brothers called to bear witness, and while the new Pope spoke, the memory of Nero's circus on which St Peter's is built rose again from beneath the marble."
(Andre Frossard, Be Not Afraid! p 7)
