Francis in New York and Philadelphia
September 28, 2015
Pope Francis, shown here greeting the crowd from a balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City in 2013, made his first visit to the United States last week. AP Photo
Last week, the pope arrived in New York City on Thursday evening, September 24, and held evening prayers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown Manhattan. The next day, September 25, Francis began his day at the United Nations, where he spoke to the General Assembly. Much of the pope’s UN speech concerned the environment and social justice. Francis remarked to the General Assembly:
“The ecological crisis, and the large-scale destruction of biodiversity, can threaten the very existence of the human species. The baneful consequences of an irresponsible mismanagement of the global economy, guided only by ambition for wealth and power, must serve as a summons to a forthright reflection on man….”
After leaving the UN, Francis held an ecumenical service at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and visited a Roman Catholic grade school in East Harlem before saying Mass at Madison Square Garden for a crowd of some 20,000 people. The pope’s message in his sermon was again about the forgotten and marginalized of society and the need for justice for all.
On Saturday, September 26, Francis arrived in Philadelphia. After holding a Mass for clergy at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, he spoke at Independence Hall, the scene of some of the most important events in American history, on religious freedom and immigration. He reminded Americans that the principles on which their nation was founded must be “constantly reaffirmed.” To Hispanic Americans in the crowd, Francis, himself the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, remarked, “I ask you not to forget that, like those who came before you, you bring many gifts to your new nation.”
On his final day in the United States, September 27, Francis visited a seminary (school for future priests) just outside of Philadelphia and a prison in Philadelphia. Afterward, one million people lined Benjamin Franklin Parkway to cheer for the pontiff as he traveled by popemobile to his last public event. At this open-air Mass outside the Philadelphia Art Museum, Francis called on everyone to see their families and homes as “domestic churches” and to act with tenderness and compassion in this personal setting.
Sunday evening, Francis ended his historic visit and returned to Rome.
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