Once upon a time in Rome we bought a gun.

Or at least the buddy I was with bought it.

It was a black Italian Beretta M 1934 semi-automatic. He paid $10 for it. The bullets were extra.

The memory of the incident came back to me upon the news of President Donald Trump’s visit, along with his wife, Melania, to the Vatican to attend the funeral of Pope Francis.

In short, I surmised that St. Peter’s Square is not what it used to be, and that is all to the good.

I’ve told the story before, but it is probably worth retelling now that Rome and the Vatican are back in the news.

It goes back to 1955, the Cold War, the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Pius XII and a couple of GIs in Rome looking for something to do.

Since my name is Peter, my buddy Joe, during the downing of a couple of bottles of red wine at an outdoor café, decided we had to go to St. Peter’s Square and maybe even see the Pope.

I met Joe at a bar in Naples. Like me, he was alone, and a soldier stationed in Germany spending a 10-day leave in Italy. While serving in different outfits, we had something in common — we were recognizable American soldiers even as we were wearing civilian clothes. So, we teamed up.

I long ago forgot what outfit Joe served in or his last name. After Rome, I never saw him again.

The Naples bar was a GI hangout. On leave like Joe, I got there after visiting the battle sights — or what was left of them — at Anzio and Salerno, where the U.S. landed during World War II on the way to liberating Rome on June 4, 1944.

I was serving in Germany in an armored cavalry regiment that patrolled the German border with Czechoslovakia, then under Soviet control. The Russians patrolled the other side across the Danube River.

Germany, France and Italy were still picking up the pieces from the war. War-damaged villages, towns and cities were common sights. There were few if any tourists, not because there was not much to see, but international air travel was in its infancy.

If you wanted to go to Europe back then, from Boston or New York, you went by ship and that took time.

The troopship I went on from New York to Bremerhaven, Germany, with 3,000 other guys in 1954 took 10 days of hard going over the rough North Atlantic. The seasickness was so bad that jumping overboard did not seem like a bad idea.

Anyway, after touring an almost empty St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, Joe and I hung out in front of the Vatican Obelisk to wait for the Pope to appear on his balcony as advertised

That is when an Italian man in a worn-out double-breasted suit approached us. He looked like Peter Falk in his Columbo television drama.

“Americani?” he said, coming close. “You wanna buy rosary beads?”

He opened the right side of his jacket. Inside were four or five rosary beads pinned there.

“No, no, no rosary beads.”

He looked around and then, opening the left side of his jacket, asked, “How about a gun?”

He had four small Berettas pinned to the lining. With a quick, furtive look around, he handed one to Joe, who palmed it. “How much?”

“Ten dollars, no lira.”

That seemed cheap, but the man looked desperate because the guns were probably stolen anyway.

“I’ll take it,” Joe said. “But what about the clip? Where’s the clip, the bullets?” Joe asked.

“Bullets extra,” the Italian entrepreneur said, with a smile. “Five dollars.”

Joe gave him the money, inserted the clip of rounds in the gun and put the gun in his waistband under his shirt. Deal done.

Then Pope Pius XII came out on the balcony and blessed the sparse crowd, including me, Joe, and the Italian gun dealer.

He was our kind of Pope.

Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com