From Opus Sanctorum Angelorum:
It was the day that Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005. I was a student in Rome. My friends and I were in the Piazza San Pietro in the morning in time for the ballot, and black smoke came out of the chimney on top of the Sistine Chapel. It meant that the Pope had not been elected yet. There were rumors that a second election would be taken by the Cardinals in the afternoon, but that was just a rumor. Since I was feeling sick with a slight fever, I decided to go back to the apartment and rest, thinking that the election in the afternoon would also end up with black smoke.
I left Piazza San Pietro leaving for the apartment, I went straight to my room, wanting to take a nap. As I lay down in bed, I “heard” this voice, or it was more like an interior voice. I can’t really describe it. It’s not like I heard it with my ears, it was almost like I understood it as one would understand a thought. It said: “Go to Piazza San Pietro.” My response: “But I just came from there, I am sick. I am taking a nap.” It insisted: “Go to Piazza San Pietro NOW.” My response again was: “No, I am taking a nap.” A third time it reiterated much more gravely, “GO…TO….PIAZZA….SAN…PIETRO….NOW!”
My response: “Ok.Ok. I will go.” So I got up, left the apartment, and waited for the Bus to San Pietro. In that crowd of thousands, I ran into a friend of mine who told me a ballot was just taken by the Cardinals. In about 20 to 30 minutes, smoke came out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, it was grey. But somehow, interiorly, I knew they had already chosen a Pope. Everyone around me thought it would turn to black smoke again, but I told my friend to run with me to the front of the crowd, closest to the balcony of the Basilica where the Pope was to be presented. We did so, and just as the smoke was turning white, a whole mass of people crashed behind us, but we were able to be near where the Pope was to be presented. In an hour or so, Benedict XVI was on that balcony. That’s when I knew the “voice” was my guardian angel.
~Alphonso P.
[For more stories, here]
[resources: books on angels and pilgrimage to Rome, holy sites of Italy]