The Pope, who chose his name from my favorite saint, is dying. But I love this photo, of the little girl reaching out to him instinctively, in part because something like this happened to me.

I was doing very minor clerical work for Hank Mott, a San Luis Obispo attorney, whose children Elizabeth and I taught at Mission Prep. Mott works pro bono—it’s an expression of his faith—to unite adoptees with their forever parents.

I was walking a group of parents and children from Hank’s office to the County Courthouse for the adoption ceremony. One of the children was Jamaican, and she looked very much like the little girl in the photo on the right.

She was beautiful beyond imagination.

Then she did what the little girl on the left did. She reached out to me, both arms. For reasons that elude me, she wanted me to carry her across the street to the courthouse. So I did, with her real parents walking just behind.

It was not easy for me to let her go. But, paradoxically, it was one of the most memorable moments of my life. Her Mom gathered her into her arms and then the three of them—the new family—walked through the courthouse doors that closed behind them. I never saw them again.

I once got lost in Paris, in the Latin Quarter, separated from the high school students I was supposed to be leading, and did not mind it at all. I was enchanted by everything around me. I was fully present, as the Mindfulness people say, in the moment.

I had the same sensation that day on Santa Rosa Street in San Luis Obispo, California. I was, somehow, both present and dazed by the little girl who’d been safe in my arms. The courthouse doors were still in morning shade. When I walked out onto the sunlit sidewalk, I was not the same man I’d been just an hour before.

Mr. Mott made that possible.