A papal visit calls for a litany of planning

The pope may be viewed by his church as infallible, but for his U.N. visit, it was Alice Hecht’s job to make sure everyone else would be as close to perfect as possible.

Hecht, United Nations chief of protocol, said that prepping for Friday’s visit by Pope Benedict XVI was much more difficult than getting ready for a state visit by President Bush, who didn’t move around the building as much or require the same kind of security.

Hecht, a U.N. veteran who helped oversee the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before becoming protocol chief, is not easily fazed.

She guided Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the pontiff on the General Assembly dais, whispering when each should sit and where they should stand.

“It’s like a play with a constantly moving set,” she said. “You have to make sure the actors are in the right place at the right time. And you have to rehearse. A lot.”

The crack protocol team from the Vatican, which also will organize the distribution of Communion to 55,000 people Sunday during 18 minutes at Yankee Stadium, visited twice in the last year to help out.

The pope is to be addressed as “Holy Father” by Roman Catholics, she learned, and as “His Holiness” by non-Catholics. No one is to touch him. To make sure, he stood on a special 6-inch-high square platform while greeting U.N. diplomats outside the main hall, preventing anyone from indulging in a papal bear hug.

The pope is considered a head of state and thus outranks the secretary-general -- not to mention the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, who, though viewed by followers as a living god, does not represent a state according to U.N. protocol.

“What was unexpected was that everything worked the way it was planned,” she said. “You always expect something to go wrong. He did come 20 minutes early, but he left right on schedule.”

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maggie.farley@latimes.com