Road trip: Family drives 13000 miles to see Pope Francis

But once Catire Walker, his wife, Noel Zemborain, and their four children met with Francis early Sunday in Philadelphia, their hero seemed bewildered. When they arrived, still incredulous, they were told to wait in a hall.

“Are you the family who traveled from Buenos Aires?” It was casual, laid-back and comfortable.

There were hugs – and then he said, “I need your prayers”.

The Vatican-sponsored conference is created to strengthen family bonds.

“The meet with the family touched him very, very much”, Lombardi said.

“Thank you for inspiring us to go out and make a bit of trouble”, they said. The family used an old Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter, or Kombi, in the epic trip. They were not hippies, they insisted, but admitted they were a taking a risk with such an adventure.

The hardest part, said Zemborain, was making the decision to go.

“They are spending and enjoying every single moment in their life as God wants us to be”.

A blog of the trip has drawn more than 100,000 visits and turned the family into minor celebrities among Spanish-speaking Catholics in South America and the US. The family piled into the vehicle in Buenos Aires in March to travel to Philadelphia to see Pope Francis at the World Meeting of Families in September.

Walker and Noel were aware of the fact that Pope Francis was scheduled to close the event and celebrate a public mass with the general public on the occasion, and decided to undertake this epic journey of a lifetime that, as we now know, ended in a grand success.

The family plans to continue their journey until November, when they will fly home from Miami. They even have a Facebook page with regular updates.

Faith, for the Walkers, has never been about church and its rituals but about the everyday occurrences of life.

The Walker family in Mexico City last month on their way to Philadelphia to see Pope Francis.

Besides, they felt immensely proud that Francis was a fellow Argentine.