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A young child yanked the pope's skullcap off his head while the pontiff was visiting the Santa Marta Vatican Institute at the Vatican on Saturday. Reuters

Pope Francis was the victim of petty theft over the weekend.

The pontiff who was visiting a children’s center had his skullcap stolen by one of the youngsters he was holding. The moment, which was captured on video, shows a small boy grabbing the pope’s white Zuchetto (skullcap) and pulling it off his head, Sky News reports.

Pope Francis took it in stride, smiling the entire time, and managing to grab the skullcap and place it back on his head. The incident took place on Saturday while the pope was visiting the Santa Marta Vatican Institute at the Vatican. Earlier, the children presented him with a cake to celebrate his 77th birthday, which falls on Dec. 17.

"I'll tell you later if it's good or not," he teased the children, according to the Christian Post.

The incident marks one of many heartwarming moments in the pope’s career. Last week, his work was highlighted when Time magazine named him Person of the Year for 2013 -- citing how he has washed the feet of female convicts, uses a modest fleet of cars, refuses to live in the luxurious papal apartments, poses for selfies and called a newspaper stand in Buenos Aires to cancel his subscription.

He has called global poverty a “scandal.” To those who have considered abortion due to rape or poverty, “Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?” On gay people: “If a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge.”

"In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power," Time's Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs wrote in explaining the magazine's choice of Pope Francis for Person of the Year.

Pope Francis has yet to respond on the Time magazine honor, which has been given to two other pontiffs: John XXIII in 1962 and John Paul II in 1994.

"If the choice of Person of the Year helps spread the message of the gospel -- a message of God's love for everyone -- he will certainly be happy about that," Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said in a statement.