There are photographs that need a long explanation before they become interesting. And then there are photographs in which a Pope is standing in a red Ferrari, surrounded by thousands of cheering Italians. Those tend to explain themselves rather quickly. It happened on June 4, 1988, at Fiorano, in the heart of Ferrari country, during John Paul II’s visit to Maranello. And although the scene today almost looks like something created by an enthusiastic Italian screenwriter — preferably one who had just consumed two espressos and decided that the Vatican and Ferrari absolutely had to appear in the same scene — it really happened. John Paul II travelled around the Fiorano circuit in an open Ferrari Mondial Cabriolet, driven by Piero Ferrari, the son of Enzo Ferrari, while workers, their families and thousands of faithful applauded from the sides of the track. It was one of those wonderful moments when two completely different symbols of Italy unexpectedly met: the white cassock of the Pope and the red bodywork of a Ferrari.
There is an important little correction to the legend before continuing the story. The Ferrari used that day is often loosely called a “Mondial 8”, but by 1988 the car was actually a Ferrari Mondial 3.2 Cabriolet, the later evolution of the Mondial family. In truth, however, nobody standing beside the circuit that day cared very much about model nomenclature. They saw a Ferrari. They saw the Pope. And for a few minutes Maranello had achieved something even Formula One rarely manages: everyone was supporting exactly the same driver.
John Paul II had arrived in Emilia-Romagna during a pastoral visit, and Ferrari was one of the most symbolic stops imaginable. Maranello was not simply a factory town. It was a place where generations of men and women had built machines that carried the name of Italy around the world. Ferrari had become much more than an automobile manufacturer. For many Italians it represented pride, craftsmanship, competition, beauty, stubbornness and that peculiar national talent for turning a mechanical object into something people discuss as though it were a member of the family. A Ferrari does not merely have an engine problem in Italy. It has “a character.” And everybody has an opinion about it.
The visit had a deeply human dimension because John Paul II was not there merely to admire sports cars. He met Ferrari workers and their families and spoke about work, its dignity and the people behind industrial success. Around six thousand workers and relatives were reported to have attended. That detail is important, because behind the polished red cars and Formula One victories there were thousands of ordinary people: mechanics, technicians, factory workers, engineers, craftsmen and families whose lives had been tied to Maranello for decades. Ferrari was the Cavallino Rampante, yes, but it was also the man who woke before sunrise to arrive at the factory on time.
Enzo Ferrari himself was ninety years old and in poor health. He was unable to receive the Pope personally at the factory, so much of the responsibility for the visit fell to his son Piero. There is something almost melancholy about that. Enzo Ferrari had spent an entire lifetime building a name that had become known from Modena to New York, Tokyo and Buenos Aires, and now one of the most famous men in the world had come to Maranello. Yet the old Commendatore could not be there to welcome him. Enzo would die only a little more than two months later, on August 14, 1988. In retrospect, the papal visit feels almost like one of the closing scenes of the first great era of Ferrari.
But solemnity has never been able to survive for very long in Italy without somebody doing something wonderfully unexpected.
According to Piero Ferrari’s later recollection, the plan was perfectly sensible. John Paul II was to move around the track in the papal vehicle, allowing him to greet and bless the people gathered around Fiorano. Everything had been organized. Security, ceremony, transportation: all the machinery that surrounds a papal visit was ready.
And then the Pope apparently noticed something rather obvious.
He was at Ferrari.
Why, then, was he not in a Ferrari?
Piero Ferrari recalled that John Paul II essentially wondered why they did not have a Ferrari for the occasion. The Pope’s secretary asked whether one could be provided. Somewhere inside Ferrari, one imagines, this became possibly the easiest request in automotive history.
“Can we find a Ferrari?”
At Maranello?
They managed.
A Mondial Cabriolet was quickly brought out. And suddenly the carefully planned papal procession acquired a rather different character.
There was a wonderfully practical problem, however. According to Piero Ferrari, the car was almost out of fuel.
It is difficult to invent a more Italian detail.
The Pope was in the passenger seat. Thousands of people were waiting. Piero Ferrari was driving. The world’s cameras were watching. And somewhere behind the dashboard, the fuel gauge was quietly suggesting that this might become the most embarrassing roadside assistance call in Vatican history.
Imagine the conversation.
“Where did His Holiness stop?”
“Turn three at Fiorano.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing serious. We need five litres of petrol.”
Fortunately, they made it.
Piero drove slowly around the circuit while John Paul II greeted the crowds. The Ferrari did not roar through Fiorano as one of its racing cars would have done. There were no lap times, no tyre temperatures, no stopwatch and certainly no attempt to discover whether papal blessing produced an aerodynamic advantage. It simply moved gently through the people, its roof open, the Pope standing high enough to be seen, raising his hand toward the faithful.
And this is where the image becomes much more beautiful than the novelty of “a Pope in a Ferrari.”
Look at what surrounded that car.
Families.
Workers.
Children.
Older men who had probably spent much of their lives inside the factory.
Mechanics who had touched Ferrari engines with their own hands.
Women who had watched husbands, sons and fathers disappear through the factory gates every morning.
Fans who did not own a Ferrari and almost certainly never would.
They were not there because the Mondial was particularly rare or valuable. They were there because two worlds that formed part of their identity had suddenly come together.
Faith and work.
Church and factory.
The Pope and Ferrari.
White and red.
For people from that part of Emilia, Ferrari was not some distant luxury brand photographed in Monte Carlo. It was local. It smelled of machine oil. You could hear engines being tested. Somebody’s uncle worked there. Somebody’s father knew somebody in the racing department. Somebody had seen Enzo Ferrari in town. The international legend had grown from a very real community.
John Paul II understood communities unusually well. He had himself been a worker as a young man in occupied Poland, performing hard physical labour before becoming a priest. Throughout his pontificate he repeatedly returned to the dignity of labour and to the relationship between work and the human person. So when he entered Ferrari, he was not simply entering the kingdom of expensive cars. He was entering a workplace populated by thousands of people.
That makes the image of him among the workers much more meaningful.
There was also something particularly suitable about John Paul II being the Pope involved in such an episode. Karol Wojtyła was an athletic man who loved mountains, skiing and physical activity. He possessed a directness and warmth that often broke through the ceremonial barriers surrounding the papacy. He travelled relentlessly. He liked being among crowds. He had a curiosity about people and places that made moments such as the Ferrari ride feel less like publicity and more like something he genuinely enjoyed.
Contemporary reports said he appeared delighted after the short ride.
And why not?
He was human.
He was in a Ferrari.
Even popes are allowed a good Saturday occasionally.
The choice of the Mondial Cabriolet was almost perfect, even if it was improvised. It was not one of Ferrari’s terrifying supercars, nor a Formula One machine. It was an elegant open four-seat Ferrari, sufficiently civilized for a ceremonial lap and open enough for John Paul II to greet people around the circuit. Its V8 engine came from a very different world from the solemn music normally associated with papal ceremonies, but on that day nobody seemed to mind.
What must Piero Ferrari have felt while driving?
Beside him was one of the most recognizable men on Earth. Around him were thousands of people. Somewhere not far away stood the company created by his father. And his father, old and ill, was absent.
Years later, Piero remembered the Pope’s charisma and admitted that speaking to him had not been easy because of the force of his presence. He also remembered that fuel gauge.
History is wonderful like that. The great public memory is John Paul II waving from a Ferrari.
The private memory of the driver is partly: please, God, do not let this thing run out of petrol.
Perhaps there was never a more appropriate moment to ask for divine assistance.
But beyond the smile, the story carries a little sadness when seen from today. Much of the Italy surrounding that event has changed. The workers in the photographs have grown old. Some are gone. The children in the crowd are now middle-aged. John Paul II died in 2005. Enzo Ferrari died just weeks after that summer visit. Cars have changed, factories have changed, Italy has changed.
Fiorano remains.
Ferrari remains.
And the photograph remains.
That is what old photographs do to us. They freeze people in a world where tomorrow has not happened yet.
Nobody in that crowd could know exactly what the following decades would bring. They simply saw the Pope passing slowly in a red convertible on a warm day in June 1988. Somebody waved. Somebody took a photograph. Somebody lifted a child onto his shoulders so that he could see better. Somebody probably went home that evening and told the story over dinner.
“You know what happened today?”
“The Pope came.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He went around Fiorano in a Ferrari.”
“Come on.”
“I swear.”
That story must have sounded almost exaggerated even on the day it happened.
And perhaps that is why we still love it.
Because it belongs to an Italy capable of producing scenes that are almost too Italian to be true. A Pope in white. A Ferrari in red. A crowd of factory workers. Piero Ferrari nervously watching a nearly empty fuel tank. The Fiorano circuit beneath them. Enzo Ferrari, approaching the final weeks of his extraordinary life, somewhere in the background of history.
No advertising agency could have planned it better.
There was no need.
Italy had already written the scene.
For a few minutes on June 4, 1988, the Ferrari Mondial stopped being a sports car. It became something like an open carriage, carrying John Paul II through the people who had built the legend of Maranello with their own hands.
The engine remained quiet.
The speed remained low.
Nobody broke the Fiorano lap record.
And yet that gentle lap became one of the most unforgettable Ferrari laps of all.
Because sometimes the most important journey made by a Ferrari is not measured in kilometres per hour.
Sometimes it is measured in people waving from the side of the road.