What do you give a Pope? In Paris, the Carmelites found something with a very personal connection to Leo XIV.

Choosing a present for someone can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. But when that person happens to be the leader of the Catholic Church, then you really have to up your game.

Thankfully, when Pope Leo visited the Institut Catholique de Paris on September 26 during his papal visit, the Carmelite friars had done their homework.

They presented him with a book -- always a good option for a learned man -- but this particular edition was dated 1694. And judging by the Pontiff's show of surprise and then a big smile as he realized what he was holding, the friars had done a thoroughly good job.

As the Carmelite Province of Paris shared in a press release, the book contained the writings of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a 17th-century Carmelite who has had a profound influence on Leo's own faith. It wasn't just any old copy, either. The volume came from the library of the Discalced Carmelites in Paris and was part of the original edition of Brother Lawrence's writings, published in 1694.

Brother Lawrence, born Nicolas Herman in 1614, had been a soldier before entering the Carmelite monastery in Paris, where he spent much of his life working as a cook and later repairing sandals. It was amid the very ordinary business of daily life that he developed what became known as the “practice of the presence of God”: remaining aware of God's presence whether at prayer or getting on with the day's work.

Actually, it's incredible to think that one of the men who would shape the spirituality of a future pope spent a good deal of his own life cooking dinner and mending shoes.

And his writings certainly found the right reader in Robert Prevost. In December 2025, when Leo was asked which books might help people understand his interior life, he mentioned Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God.

“It's been my spirituality for years,” he said.

There was another detail that made the gift particularly well chosen. The Institut Catholique occupies part of the former Carmelite monastery where Brother Lawrence lived for decades. Leo was being handed the writings of a man who had accompanied his own spiritual life while standing in the very place where that man had lived, and and prayed.

After he received his gift, Leo spoke of Brother Lawrence as someone who had “deeply marked my journey of faith through his mysticism of daily life.”

But perhaps the nicest part is the one caught on camera: Leo looking down at the book and smiling. After all, whether you're buying for a friend, a relative or the Pope, there's a particular pleasure in getting a present exactly right.

If you'd like to see the smile on Leo's face when he received his gift, take a look at the video from Aleteia France below: