Dear Readers,

This week, there were two remarkable events, one in Rome, the other in Boothbay Harbor. Neither will ever be remembered in the school history books, but maybe, just maybe, they should be.

On the first day of his papacy, a day filled with the all the opulence and pageantry of that ancient faith, the new pope stopped in at the Rome hotel where he was staying during the conclave that picked him to replace the retiring pope.

There, Pope Francis I, a Jesuit Cardinal from Buenos Aries, picked up his bags, leaned over the counter at the front desk and paid his hotel bill. He also greeted the staff and thanked them for their service. No one knows if he left a tip for the chambermaid, but it would not surprise me if he did.

At about the same time, in Boothbay Harbor, during a very low spring tide, 9-year-old Matthew Sullivan was walking with his dad on the exposed flats not far from the footbridge. In the muck, the son of Pete and Kathryn Sullivan spotted something shiny. It was a fancy Kodak underwater digital camera.

Matthew and his family went home, cleaned it up a bit and pushed the button. Surprisingly, it worked. In the little window, they could see photos of some folks they didn’t recognize. One of the photos had an email address.

Here comes the tough part. Do you just keep the camera? Or do you try to find its owner? Matthew and his family opted for the latter and sent a note to the email address. “It turned out it belonged to a lady in California. She had loaned the camera to a vacationing relative and they must have dropped it off the footbridge,” Kathryn Sullivan said.

Last Friday, after a bit of family discussion about right and wrong, Matthew mailed the camera back to its owner in California.

In both cases, on different sides of the globe, a world religious leader and a little boy did the right thing, not because the world was watching, but because it was the right thing to do.

The new pope, whose new church is decorated with some of the great art in the history of the world, took office amid the pomp and ceremony that is the Vatican. He seemed to shy away from some of the trappings of the office, including the handmade red loafers.

Then, just like the rest of us, he took the time to pay his hotel bill in person, and thank the staff. Is it a symbol? Is it a portent of things to come? Will it mean he will engage with the flock like a pastor, rather than a medieval lord? Time will tell.

Here in Boothbay Harbor, Matthew, who lives with his family in their Bayside Inn Bed and Breakfast, could have cleaned off the camera and kept it. No one would have been the wiser. “Finders, keepers; losers, weepers,” they used to say.

But Matthew’s mom and dad explained it was not his to keep. It really belonged to someone else. So they made the effort to find the owner. They made a stranger happy. Maybe the photos on the memory card will make someone happy because a little boy did the right thing.

Best of all, Matthew’s folks taught their son a life lesson. They taught him to do something not because of a possible reward, or because there would be consequences if he didn’t act. He was taught to do something because it was the right thing to do.

The fact the new pope, the powerful leader of a billion Catholics, stopped in and paid his own hotel bill, and didn’t leave that ordinary chore to some assistant, gives me hope for the future of the worldwide Catholic Church.

And in our town, I gained a lot more hope for our future when I learned a young man named Matthew put an expensive camera in the mail box.