I don't know whether it was the Pontiff himself or a pilot who did it, but someone stuck a little papal flag out of one of the cockpit windows.

When the plane came to a stop and the Holy Father stepped out - it must have been the serenity around him or simply how he held himself - but I thought he looked very frail.

History was in the making for us because during his short stay, he ran into another Christian religious leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury on our soil.

It was most auspicious, we all thought, that the Pope and Archbishop were meeting in Ghana. Our confidence as a nation was at its peak because democracy was working and we had a really liberal-minded person serving as our president.

All that hope and confidence was to be shattered a year later when an ex-Flt Lt upturned our democratic cart and set about humiliating the man who once hosted the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury.

Today, the Pope has been called to his creator, so was President Limann a few years ago. There must be something sobering in all of that, but tragically, for some people, like the man who overthrew President Limann, it is as if he is moving from one drunken stupor to the other.

Does ex-Flt Lt Rawlings ever contemplate death...his mortality?