Archbishop Philip Hannan has been through the pomp, the grandeur and the sacred nature of papal visits before.  When Pope John Paul II came to New Orleans in 1987, the Archbishop was his host.

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Archbishop Hannan will attend the papal visit this week.

Though he has been through it before -- even at 94 years-old -- Archbishop Hannan still gets an adrenaline rush from papal visits.  And once more, Hannan will feel the excitement running through his veins when he gets an opportunity to meet Pope Benedict XVI in Washington D.C.

"I will be tremendously thrilled by it, on Wednesday, no doubt about it at all," Archbishop Hannan said.

The relationship between the two dates to decades earlier. Archbishop Hannan first met Joseph Ratzinger long before he became Pope Benedict XVI.  In the 1960s, at the second Vatican Council, Ratzinger was brought in to answer questions from the media.  It was during this time that the pair met.

"He was always very, very quiet, very studious," Archbishop Hannan recalled, "and he always had the exact right answer, and that's how I came to know him."

Actually, the connection between the two goes back to World War II.  In Northern Germany, the Archbishop of Cologne assigned Philip Hannan Protector of the Cathedral.  Ratzinger rose to prominence under the tutelage of the Archbishop of Cologne.

After Pope John Paul II passed away, the question of his successor was never in doubt to Hannan.  "When I heard that he was a candidate I said, I am betting on him," Archbishop Hannan said, adding Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II shared similar views.  While the former pope may have delivered speeches with more charisma and more personality, Archbishop Hannan said, the message was still the same.

"This guy has got the same mentality as John Paul II, not many people have caught on to that, but he's got exactly the same attitude as John Paul II," Archbishop Hannan said.

Archbishop Hannan will have a chance to meet with Pope Benedict, face to face, in Washington.  And he said, when he meets with the Pope, he's not going to talk about Cologne, but instead, about historic meetings coming up this November.

"And I am going to talk to him solely on one thing, to keep up this idea of dialogue with the Muslims," Archbishop Hannan said.

Archbishop Hannan believes there is common ground between the two faiths, Catholicism and Islam, and a fruitful dialogue would be a great thing for the free world. "This should be his contribution to the world," Archbishop Hannan said.  "That he finally found a way to carry out a means to dialogue with the Muslims."

While he believes Pope John Paul II was the most popular pope in the last 300 years, Archbishop Hannan said, bringing Catholics and Muslims together could be Pope Benedict's legacy.  This legacy is something Archbishop Hannan will bring up when the pair meet for a few moments in Washington D.C.