When Alessandra Dee Crespo was first asked to meet Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at a conference in 1997, she did not think much of it.

Twenty-five years later, she is attending the funeral at the Vatican of the man she got to know personally and who changed her perspective on life forever.

Dee Crespo was 26 and the youngest delegate at that 1997 conference, which she was asked to attend as part of her job with Caritas. Being the youngest delegate, the conference organisers wanted her to meet the pope, a keynote speaker at the event.

She said that his reputation was already “not very flattering” back then, and she was initially reluctant to meet him.

“No way,” was her first reaction. However, she immediately changed her mind when she met him.

“A gentle, humble and extraordinarily wise man. When I spoke to him, he made me feel like he was genuinely interested in what I had to say,” she recalled, adding that he asked her whether she knew Mgr Charles Scicluna.

“People who criticise him for being conservative have never read his work or are relying entirely on what they hear other people say about him,” she said.

“He was so revolutionary that he was the first pope to resign in six centuries.”

Dee Crespo, who is the chancellor of the Maltese Church’s Regional Tribunal of Second Instance, became the first Maltese woman and first layperson to complete all academic qualifications for the priesthood, and her studies brought her even close to Benedict XVI’s works, causing her to become mesmerised by his writings.

Days before Pope John Paul II died in 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger had led the annual torchlit Way of the Cross at the Colosseum and, as dean of the College of Cardinals, he had led the late pope’s funeral Mass.

From the homilies on those occasions, when he spoke about the need for Church reform and the problem of relativism within the institution, Dee Crespo knew he would become pope. And when he came out smiling and waving on that balcony a few days later, she was ecstatic.

Dee Crespo met privately with Benedict XVI twice after he resigned – in 2015 and in 2017.

“I had requested a private meeting and the person who spoke to him came back saying that Benedict XVI had asked me to give him a date and time and he’ll see if he is available,” she said, adding that their meetings were long and profound and filled her with courage for the future of the Church.

On one occasion, she told him that Archbishop Scicluna had sent his regards, prompting the pope emeritus to tell her that the archbishop was “un piccolo grande uomo” (a small great man).

“When I visited him last, his health had already deteriorated a lot but he managed to stand and hold my hand,” she recalled, adding that he frequently asked her about the island and the Maltese people.

“I felt that he was holding me so that I could help him stay on his feet. And I knew I was being held by a saint.”

When she heard the news of his death last weekend, she cried but booked tickets for the funeral straightaway.

“To me, this is a personal pilgrimage during which I want to say arrivederci to the man who strengthened my faith and outlook on life,” she said.

Gozitan altar boy serving at today’s funeral mass

Fourteen-year-old Giacomo Debrincat will also be at the funeral today and he will be serving as one of the altar boys during the Mass celebrated by Pope Francis.

The Gozitan altar boy happened to be in Rome by chance when it was announced that Benedict XVI had died.

Together with other Maltese and Gozitan altar boys he had already served at the Vatican and was in Rome again to serve a second time during Christmastime.

Now that he happens to be in Rome, part of his duty will be to serve at the funeral Mass, along with other altar boys from around the world.

“It’s a once-in-history opportunity. We cannot believe he will live this unique experience,” his mother, Tanya told Times of Malta on Wednesday, as Giacomo was waiting to be assigned his role in Thursday's functions.

Giacomo’s family is accompanying him in Rome.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday evening Archbishop Scicluna led a De Requiem service for the former pope at St John’s Co-Cathedral.

The archbishop, along with Cardinal Mario Grech, will be among the co-celebrants in Thursday morning’s funeral Mass at the Vatican, which is scheduled to begin at 9.30am.