Close encounter of the PAPAL KIND.

She wasn't exactly looking for a miracle. But when a mother dragged her critically ill daughter out to receive a blessing from the pope, she found that being in the presence of holiness was more overwhelming than she expected.

I have never had any real desire to meet the pope. Although I am a Catholic, and a believing one, my relationship with the instutional church has been troubled at best. When I was 12, I wrote to Pope Paul IV asking why women could not be priests, and the answer he gave me ("Ask your parents") was so nonsensical that I could no longer take him, or his successors, seriously.

But when Pope John Paul II came to India last November, where I have lived for the past 20 years, things had changed. My little girl was suffering from a rare degenerative disorder that had caused her to regress, at the age of 10, to the mental level of a six-month-old. Shortly before the pope's arrival, my husband and I were told she probably had only months left to live.

I was not looking for a miracle. Moy Moy's presence in our lives was already miraculous enough. In spite of her complete inability to speak, walk, or take care of her own most basic needs, she possesses the most powerful and magnetic personality I have ever encountered. When our doctor made her prognosis, friends and family from around the world dropped what they were doing to come and be with her, even if only for a day. Because of her, I started a school for children with special needs in our small town that has thrived, solely on private donations, from Day 1.

I did not expect the pope to cure her. To me, there was nothing wrong with her. I believed that God had selected her, as he had the pope, for a special task on earth, and I thought the two of them should meet. It was that simple.

I asked my husband's uncle, who is the vice president of India, if he could help arrange a meeting. He spoke to the arch bishop of Delhi, who agreed to put us in the front row at the pope's final function in India, a meeting with religious leaders from all over the country. He couldn't guarantee that we would get a special audience, but at least we would be there.

On the great day we had a problem. As part of her disorder, Moy Moy has convulsions and is on a number of drugs to try and control them. One of the side effects of the medication is severe constipation and she had been miserable for days. As the hour of the function drew nearer, I grew more and more desperate. I tried everything I could think of to get her to perform, but finally I realized that if we didn't get ready and go, we would miss the whole thing altogether.

I put her diaper back on for the tenth time, and as I put her in her First Communion dress, I muttered crossly to God that if "all things work together for the good of those who love him," I hoped he had a plan for this little circumstance.

We reached the meeting hall with 10 minutes to spare and, after a little wrangling with officious priests who wanted to put us in a back row, we were seated front and center, and Moy Moy settled happily to chew as many of the programs as she could get her hands on.

Suddenly a hush fell over the crowd. Unlike most Indian gatherings, which are cheerful, informal, and full of whispering and rustling, this one was eerie in its silence. As the papal envoy processed solemnly in, dressed most magnificently in their purple robes, I realized to my dismay that Moy Moy was the one and only child in the hall. If there was any noise at all, it was going to come from her.

As the cardinals walked past us, most of them reached out to bless Moy Moy, and I prayed for one of them to grant her the gift of silence. As they took their seats, the quiet deepened perceptibly and suddenly the pope himself appeared from a side door and walked slowly to the center of the dais. I was moved almost to tears at the sight of him, a reaction that took me by surprise and kept me from attending properly to what anyone else was saying. All I could think about was how I was going to get past the security cordon and close enough for him to notice Moy Moy and give her a blessing.

The next hour and a half was a nightmarish period of intense exertion on my part to keep my squirming, energetic little girl occupied and quiet. My body ached with the effort, but as the last (of a dozen!) speakers finally wound to a close, I relaxed. Only the pope was left, and surely Moy Moy would be good for him?

He began to speak. It was the end of a strenuous day, and he was no longer a young man. His voice, although sure, was soft and slow. The crowd, almost as one, leaned forward so as not to miss a word, and there was compassion, and perhaps awe, in its listening, as if in recognition of a holiness most of us have never experienced.

He had been speaking no more than two minutes when Moy Moy's bowels finally began to move. She groaned loudly in the uninhibited way that only a baby can and there was no one in the hall who didn't know exactly what she was doing. The moment seemed to go on forever, suspended in time, before I gathered my wits enough to pick her up in my arms and move past the startled security guards to the side exit, just a little way from where the pope had entered.

As we got to the door, she suddenly stopped fussing and I put her down, thinking maybe this was actually a better position to be in. Several security men were standing in front of us; Moy Moy, babylike, kept reaching out to play with this one's wristwatch or to tug at that one's jacket. Each time, the man in question would turn sharply to see who was touching him, realize it was Moy Moy, and go all soft and affectionate, patting her cheek and smiling fondly down at her. After enough of them had been won over, I decided to make my move.

"The archbishop said she would be able to get a special blessing," I said to one of them. "Should I go up on the dais?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Let me find out."

He went and asked his superior, who was more concerned with whether the red carpet had been laid out in readiness for the pope's departure. "No one gets a special blessing," he said brusquely.

"Oh, come on," my man insisted. "It's for the child." He went on arguing our case so persistently that his superior finally gave up and told him to go and ask the chief of Italian protocol. Mr. Protocol agreed, but reluctantly, saying it would have to be backstage. "But the photographers are all out here," my man cried. "She's got to have a photo. Think of her grandparents?

Mr. Protocol was too harassed to worry about my parents. The pope was obviously finishing his speech and would be getting up to leave any moment. He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me along toward the back stage. As I followed him, I glanced back at my friend and shrugged. He smiled as if to say don't worry, I'll sort it out. Sure enough, as we stood in the little living room off the stage waiting, a photographer came rushing breathlessly in to join us--the official photographer of the Italian entourage, sent specially by my friend the security guard.

The crowd outside began to clap and cheer, almost loud enough to drown out the sound of my own heart pounding in my ears, and suddenly there was the pope, just a few feet away from us. Moy Moy was in my arms and he came right over to us and put both his hands on her head and blessed her. Then he took my hand and blessed me, too. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a rosary for Moy Moy and I heard one of the cardinals whisper to him, "And one for the Mama," and he gave me one, too.

I had planned to say so many things to him about this little girl, this treasure God had given us, but I found, to my dismay, that I was absolutely speechless. I don't think I said even one word. I did not expect to be so moved, especially by one with whom I disagreed so fundamentally, but in the presence of such pure holiness, everything else seemed irrelevant. When he left, I was trembling so much I had to sit down or I would have fallen.

Moy Moy, of course, was quite unperturbed. As I changed her diaper later that evening, I couldn't stop laughing about the way all things--including constipation--really do work for the good of those who love him.

Since Moy Moy's meeting with the pope--and the intense prayers and love sent her way by many friends during last summer's crisis--I am happy to report that her condition has stabilized. Her doctors are at a loss to explain how or why.

By JO MCGOWAN, a writer living in India.