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Girl meets pope and promptly steals his hat
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Pope Francis looks at a painting given to him as a gift by director Martin Scorsese (right) when he had a private audience with the pope at the Vatican on Nov. 30, 2016. (Pool Photo via AP/L'Osservatore Romano)
When Catholic blogger Mountain Butorac took his goddaughter to meet Pope Francis II in Rome, he wasn’t expecting this.
As 3-year-old American Estella Westrick was lifted up by a Vatican aide to receive a kiss from the head of the Catholic Church, she reached out and plucked the hat off of his head. The pope looked surprised for a second, before taking his hat back as he and everyone else laughed.
Butorac posted the video of the incident on Twitter, where it went viral, receiving over 18,000 retweets, and 40,000 likes.
Took my Goddaughter to meet the pope. She stole his hat! pic.twitter.com/SdSorop3uN
— Mountain Butorac (@MountainButorac) March 22, 2017
Read also: Pope chats with Scorsese, tells director he read 'Silence'
“You can see that as they brought her, she was kind of staring at the hat,” said godfather Butorac to Today. “So as the pope was going in to kiss her, she was already eyeballing it and her hand was starting to move up. It was like she went in with a plan.”
While Estella’s mother, Alexis Westrick, was not there to witness the incident, she was quickly filled in by the 3-year-old.
“She told me, ‘I met the pope, and he gave me a rosary — and I took his hat!’ She was so excited about it,” said Westrick.
"It's her first full day in Rome. Who knows what she will get up to tomorrow," Butorac joked. (sul/kes)
