I'm trying to remember whether we were initially contacted by letter or by phone to take part in the competition that the Vatican was organising for this church. There had been, in fact, a competition earlier that was open to Italian architects, and fifty Italian architects made designs which were presented for this site for the church, and none of them were found acceptable. And so they decided to have an invited competition without Italian architects. And so they invited three Americans and one German architect to take part in this competition. The German was Behnisch, and the three Americans were Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, and myself. So we all got a program and what we had to do, and made a design, and sent it to Rome. And then I was informed that I had won. And at that time, I remember they said, you know, very pleased to tell you we chose your design for the church, and would I like to come to Rome to present the design to the Pope? And I said, you know, of course, it would be an honour, you know, I mean, I'd be delighted. So I sent the model, because I think he only sent photographs of the model for the competition. So I sent the model to Rome, and we settled on a date in October that would be on a Wednesday because the Pope has a public audience from nine to eleven every Wednesday morning, and it would be at eleven o'clock after he has sixteen thousand people that he talks to in a small chapel next to St. Peter's. So I got there at eight o'clock in the morning, you know, to make sure that everything was set up properly for when the Pope came in, and I came into a very big room, maybe ten times the size of this room, and it really was very dark, it had no windows.

And so I said to one of the Swiss Guards who was standing around, you know, could you get some lights so when the Pope comes in, you know, we could see the model. That's what I was here for. And he disappeared. Time went on and I saw it. Nine o'clock, nothing happened. Ten o'clock, there was no... I called the Swiss Guard. I said, you know, how about some lights, some 'luce', you know, we need some lamps, some candles, I don't care. And they disappeared. And time's going on and five minutes before eleven, four Swiss Guard big guys come in and they take the model, which was in a far corner of the room, and they carry it to the door. I said, well, why are you doing that? I mean, I've been here all this time. Why are you bringing the model to the door? They said, so the Pope doesn't have to walk so far. I said, well, that makes sense, but where are the lights? Just then, the Pope appears and the television cameras appear and there was light. So it just shows you have to have faith. After this meeting, and they had chosen a very young priest who was the priest for this area, so it was his church, but there was two other people involved in the whole construction process. One as an advisor, as a professional advisor, because he had experience of building and he was terrific and very helpful. And another was someone from the Vatican to sort of oversee that the building didn't exceed the budget, which was five thousand dollars or something like that. I mean, there's nothing. It was just zero. Everything was given. There was no budget. So I said, well, you know, the budget is so little, maybe I should make some changes, you know, to reduce the size of the church and the community centre so it's less expensive. And they said, no, no, no, you can't change a thing. We like it just the way it is. I said, well, then you've got to find some money somewhere. And it took forever to build because they had to get the concrete given.