With drama befitting a Dan Brown novel, the papyrus was transported from Switzerland to the Vatican.
"An armed motorcade surrounded by people with machine guns picked up the texts," said Krupp, the only Jewish man to have ever been twice knighted by two popes.
Donahoe added, "The materials were carried in the passenger section of a public plane that had some seats removed. Officers then escorted it to the Vatican."
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, a librarian and archivist at the Vatican, received the papyrus, from which he took a few pages to Pope Benedict XVI's private apartment.
According to the Catholic News Service, Cardinal Tauran invited the pope to "come in person to the library to meditate, if I may say so, in front of that which can be considered a true relic, given that the church has always venerated the divine Scriptures."
Donahoe believes the papyrus has now come full circle.
He said, "It has been a pilgrimage, a holy journey, to bring the texts back to the church, back to their proper home."
