Flipping through the memoirs of the late foreign correspondent Edward Behr reveals the media crush with popes was once a little more intimate. Behr describes a memorable moment when a photographer colleague, George Menager, covered Pope Paul VI’s 1969 visit to the Holy Land. Because of the complexities of crowd control, the pope and Menager, Behr recalled, found themselves “isolated from the crowd and the rest of the press corps, (and) eyed each other warily. Finally, the pope said, in his fluent but heavily accented French, ‘What an interesting life you must lead.” Menager stared back and grunted, ‘You haven’t done so badly yourself.’ “