It was one of the few unscripted moments of the entire week. Following the final psalm reading at Saturday's papal mass inside New York's historic St. Patrick's Cathedral, Pope Benedict XVI held on to the microphone when an altar assistant, who had likely rehearsed this moment dozens of times, was about to take it away and move on with the service. "I will do all possible to be a real successor to Peter, who also was a man with all his faults and sins but who remains finally the rock for the church," the pontiff said in his thick German accent, speaking slowly and deliberately. The moment seemed to catch everyone off guard, including the row of journalists seated next to the altar. Impromptu moments like this don't come often from Benedict.
(Daniel Stone and Matthew Philips, http://www.newsweek.com/id/133078)
