US girl going blind sees pope as part of ‘bucket list’

VATICAN CITY: A five-year-old American girl who does not know she is gradually going blind met Pope Francis on Wednesday as part of her parents’ "visual bucket list" to show her things and people while she can still see.

Elizabeth "Lizzy" Myers and her parents, from Lexington, Ohio, were given special seats at Francis’s general audience in St Peter’s Square, where the pope spoke to them briefly.

"She was awestruck. She just teared up," her mother Christine Myers, who is Catholic, told reporters afterwards. "To her he’s the big guy in the white hat." "He asked us to pray for him and told us he would pray for us," she said. Lizzy, whose case has received big media coverage in the United States, is not aware that she is suffering from Usher’s Syndrome, which will eventually leave her deaf and blind.