The Popemobile was moving along the Champs-Élysées when a police officer did something no one had asked him to do.
He lifted Marie-Garance Noël, a 10-year-old girl wearing a blue dress and living with multiple disabilities, into his arms just as Pope Leo XIV passed in front of her. It was September 26, hours before the Mass at Place de la Concorde, and hundreds of thousands of people filled the avenue.
The pontiff leaned toward her. He took her hand, looked into her eyes, and blessed her. AFP photographer Ludovic Marin captured that moment, and the image went around the world.
Her adoptive mother, Clotilde Noël, later said that the blessing represented vulnerable people, that segment of humanity that is often sidelined for being different. She has adopted four children with disabilities. Her other daughter, Pépa Teresa, who uses a wheelchair, also received the blessing that day, although no one photographed her.
Sometimes an image is worth what it says about everyone who was there.