Childhood family jaunts included trips to the shrine of the Black Madonna, Our Lady of Altotting.

CNN: Benedict a pope aware of his flaws

His favorite so far, he said, is the Black Madonna, a revered icon housed in a monastery in Czestochowa, Poland.

WSJ: Poland's Big Statue of Jesus Draws Pilgrims, Though Rivals Belittle It

But you can steal away from all that and refresh yourself in the cool and dark of the chapel beneath the Black Madonna and the lamps hung there by Crusaders and the bell that was said to ring miraculously every time storm-tossed sailors were saved by the Virgin of Rocamadour.

FORBES: How foie gras was my valley

You don't have to believe that legend, but Henry Plantagenet, later Henry II of England, husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the father of Lionhearted, did, and he came here to pray to the Black Madonna that still looks down on those who come to the little chapel by the tomb where the hermit's body was found.

FORBES: How foie gras was my valley

Without her helmet and bulletproof glasses, which had briefly been tossed aside, she look like a Madonna - small, beautiful, with thick black hair coiled in a bun.

NPR: U.S. Troops in Iraq Include 10,000 Mothers