{"id":2210,"date":"2016-04-26T15:53:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T19:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=2210"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:52","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:52","slug":"papal-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2016\/04\/papal-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Papal Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis made his first visit to the United States from September 22 through September 27, 2015, stopping in Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia. Seton Hall was present in the week\u2019s activities \u2014 both directly, in the ways our community members participated in the visit, and indirectly, through a symbolic gift the president shared with the pontiff upon his arrival at the White House. President Barack Obama gave the pope a 116-year-old key from the home of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, our University\u2019s namesake, to celebrate her \u2014 and the pope\u2019s \u2014 dedication to the sick and the poor. The story that follows details the experiences of just a few Seton Hall community members as they celebrated this historic occasion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Washington: Tuesday, September 22<\/strong><\/p>\n

The plane had just landed. Everybody was waiting for Pope Francis to emerge: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, bishops and clergy, an honor guard and a delegation of Catholic schoolchildren, all on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Andrea Bartoli, the dean of the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, was watching, too, on a monitor in a broadcast studio in New York. His job for the day was to help explain to his ABC News radio audience how Pope Francis differs from other popes, and how this visit would likely differ from previous papal visits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you make the comparison of Pius XII, for example, and Francis, it\u2019s just extraordinary,\u201d Bartoli told listeners. \u201cPius XII, you could not see him walk. He was never walking in front of anybody. You were imagining the pope as if he was a demigod. He was on a different planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in Washington, the plane door opened and Pope Francis, his head bare, walked down the stairs \u2014 in front of everybody, and very much on this planet \u2014 carrying his zucchetto in his hand to keep it from blowing away, taking his first steps onto American soil. After all the greetings, he got into a small black Fiat 500L hatchback that was dwarfed by the phalanx of SUVs escorting it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see that there is a joyfulness to the moment that is very, very important, and yet there is also a simplicity to the protocol,\u201d Bartoli told his audience. \u201cIt\u2019s a very good beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the beginning of a busy six days, not just for the pope but for a number of members of the Seton Hall community who intersected with him along the way \u2014 offering news commentary; covering his trip on social media; attending his Masses in Washington, New York and Philadelphia; and even flying Shepherd One, the American Airlines 777 that ferried him around the United States and then back to Rome.<\/p>\n

Washington: Wednesday, September 23<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two buses left the Seton Hall campus before dawn, bound for Washington with 80 seminarians and four priests from Immaculate Conception Seminary and the College Seminary at St. Andrew\u2019s Hall.<\/p>\n

These are just a few of the countless personal stories surrounding the pope’s visit. Do you have an experience you’d like to share? Send us a note at shuwriter@shu.edu<\/em>.<\/div>They joined a stream of hundreds of other seminarians converging on the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the canonization Mass of Father Jun\u00edpero Serra, the Franciscan missionary and the patron of religious vocations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were so many that I was not able to find a seat, so they put us outside the basilica,\u201d said Dailon Lisabet-Sanchez, 29, a first-year student at Immaculate Conception Seminary who stood with fellow classmates on the front steps, watching the Mass on the large video screens.<\/p>\n

He saw Francis from a distance twice, as the \u201cpopemobile\u201d arrived and left. His mother had gotten a better view two days earlier in Cuba at the Mass the pope said in Holgu\u00edn, the diocese where Lisabet-Sanchez lived until he left to join his father in Miami in 2006. \u201cShe was very happy to see him,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was the first time she saw a pope.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had seen the pope once before, on a spring break trip to Rome with some St. Andrew\u2019s classmates, but the canonization Mass of Jun\u00edpero Serra touched a deeper spot in him. \u201cTo know that he was a man who was one of the first who came here to the United States and brought the faith, that\u2019s something that\u2019s special.\u201d (The seminary has a gold silk chasuble from the Franciscan missionary seminary in Mexico that was home for 18 years to Serra, who is thought to have worn it.)<\/p>\n

While Lisabet-Sanchez and his fellow seminarians watched the Mass from the basilica steps, Father Michael Russo \u201967\/M.Div. \u201975 watched from a place familiar to him from all the other papal visits he has covered since 1978: a television control-room truck parked outside. \u201cI always tell people, \u2018You probably see more of the papal trip than I do,\u2019 in the sense that I\u2019m not following every moment of the pope\u2019s day,\u201d said Father Russo, a professor of communication studies at St. Mary\u2019s College of California.<\/p>\n

Father Russo\u2019s pope-watching career started in 1965, when Pope Paul VI became the first pope to visit the United States. He and his father saw the pope bless St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral and bless the crowd. \u201cI\u2019m a real groupie when it comes to that kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Father Russo\u2019s journalism career started when he was in the seminary and was hired by a fellow alumnus to work as Walter Cronkite\u2019s desk assistant at CBS News. He continued working in the special events unit at CBS \u2014 \u201celections, conventions and moonshots,\u201d as he describes it, and eventually papal deaths, elections and visits. For this visit, he was working as a media expert for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, consulted and interviewed by reporters and producers following the pope. He also wrote for the ABC News political blog, The Note, and for his own blog, The Francis Factor.<\/p>\n

None of this got him any closer to a photo-op with the pope than a life-size cutout at one of the media centers where he spent the week.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have this funny notion that somehow if you\u2019re a priest you\u2019re just going to be escorted into a room with the pope,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are many more bodies ahead of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington: Thursday, September 24<\/strong><\/p>\n

Father Russo watched the pope\u2019s speech to Congress from the press room \u201cseveral stories into the belly of the Washington Convention Center,\u201d as he wrote in his blog. He was moved when Pope Francis cited two prominent American Catholics in the speech \u2014 Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton \u2014 but he highlighted another, perhaps more telling, moment in his ABC News blog.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, one amazing image of Pope Francis stands out, that of him riding in the \u2018popemobile\u2019 as his motorcade moved down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to St. Matthew\u2019s Cathedral,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe cheering crowds on the sidewalk, the fast pace of the Secret Service beside the vehicle, and the pope\u2019s loving and smiling embrace of the few children allowed to come to him caught my attention. We have parades like this for presidential inaugurations, but this was one huge victory lap, and reminiscent in size to that of General Douglas MacArthur\u2019s return from the Pacific after World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n

Late that afternoon, Father Russo took the train to New York, and Pope Francis took his Fiat back to Joint Base Andrews. An American Airlines 777 \u2014 with a papal insignia decal outside and a microphone system inside so he could talk to the traveling press \u2014 was designated as Shepherd One and assigned to carry him to New York and Philadelphia and then back to Rome.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t really until we were at Andrews and the motorcade circled and he was on his way up the jet bridge that I was like, \u2018Holy moly, I\u2019m flying the pope,\u201d said Thomas Murray, whose daughter Laurel is a junior communication major at Seton Hall.<\/p>\n

Murray, a pilot with American for more than 30 years, had gotten the call two months earlier asking him to serve as first officer on the four-person flight crew. He and his wife, Donna, are devout Catholics, active both in their parish (St. Paul\u2019s in Princeton, N.J.) and in the schools their three children attended. \u201cI thought of nothing else every waking moment for two months,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I had a free second, I was thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He prepared by compiling a 140-page guide for his iPad. He flew C-141 transport planes in the Air Force Reserve for 10 years, is a decorated veteran of the first Gulf War, has hauled the limousine on presidential trips and has twice carried secretaries-general of the United Nations. \u201cBut they\u2019re not in the same category as His Holiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York: Friday, September 25<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Preaching to the World:<\/strong> The pontiff prepares to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Photo: Todd Heisler, The New York Times.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While Pope Francis was addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Dean Bartoli was at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York, waiting to see him at the interfaith prayer service; Father Russo was sitting with a TV anchor from the local CBS affiliate in a makeshift studio atop an adjacent hotel, offering more commentary; and Marianna Eboli, a junior diplomacy major, was shuffling slowly in the daylong line to enter Central Park for the papal motorcade late that afternoon, posting all the while on Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram for a social-media campaign called Pope Is Hope.<\/p>\n

As Bartoli waited for the Ground Zero service to begin, he spoke live on The Brian Lehrer Show on public radio station WNYC. \u201cThe scene is incredible, and we are actually in the cavernous area of the memorial where you are really deep into the earth, and everybody\u2019s here, all religions, all people of the earth,\u201d he told the listeners. \u201cAnd with this pope that is many ways not just somebody to talk but somebody that really would like to listen, somebody that would like to welcome the sorrow of humanity, somebody that would like to connect with the pain of humanity, I think that this is a perfect place and a perfect moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the pope left to visit a school in East Harlem, Mari Eboli was still trudging along in the Central Park line, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the pope emoji that the Pope Is Hope campaign was spreading.<\/p>\n

Eboli had been chosen as one of the volunteers for the \u201cdigital street team\u201d sponsored by Aleteia USA, a Catholic global media company, and a CBS camera crew was following her for a story. \u201cThe whole point was to show the pope\u2019s visit through the millennials\u2019 eyes in social media,\u201d she said. \u201cWe wanted to show that, in the moment of need that the world is at, we\u2019re all still together, we\u2019re all still doing acts of kindness; that no matter how hard things get, good is winning and good will win.\u201d<\/p>\n

After almost eight hours in line, Eboli finally reached a spot atop a small rise near the end of the pope\u2019s motorcade route through the park. \u201cYou could hear this wave of screams and cheering coming,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She tweeted a message and a photo of him waving: \u201cAnd just like that he stole my heart, the cutest little thing I\u2019ve ever seen! Feeling so blessed,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Then she watched him get into the Fiat for the trip to his next stop, Madison Square Garden. \u201cWhen I saw him I had tears in my eyes. I called my grandma in Brazil so she could feel the emotion that everyone was feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mass at the Garden was the pope\u2019s last New York event, and in the crowd were 16 seminarians from the Diocese of Camden who are studying at Immaculate Conception Seminary. \u201cWhat struck me was the effort he was making,\u201d said John March, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who served as a Marine officer in Iraq and is now a first-year seminary student. \u201cI was struck by his work ethic, that at his age he\u2019d be willing to take on a schedule like he did.\u201d<\/p>\n

March kept a particularly close eye on Pope Francis after Communion. \u201cYou could just tell he\u2019s a very prayerful man,\u201d he said. \u201cHe seems to really focus on the condition of our hearts, and that we do have numbness in our hearts. He\u2019s encouraging us to let God soften those numb parts of our hearts, and that\u2019s a message I need to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philadelphia: Saturday, September 26<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Sign of Peace:<\/strong> The faithful sign a portrait of Pope Francis after his visit to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Photo: Richard Perry, The New York Times<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Shepherd One\u2019s flight from New York to Philadelphia on Saturday morning, Thomas Murray\u2019s passenger had a surprise request. \u201cHe asked to sit in the cockpit with us,\u201d he said. So the pope sat in a jump seat behind the pilots, right next to the laptop sleeve in which Murray was carrying flags from his children\u2019s schools, including Seton Hall. \u201cIt was just so amazing to be sitting in my workplace with His Holiness sitting right behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n

That night, when Pope Francis presided over the Festival of Families, Andrea Bartoli was among the guests seated onstage with him. \u201cHe spoke off the cuff, and he was clearly at home, and clearly very happy with people,\u201d Bartoli said. \u201cHe has this wonderful warmth that is so inviting, and America responded to that very beautifully \u2014 the idea that we could be better, that we can take care of one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

And at the end of the evening \u2014 after Andrea Bocelli had sung the Lord\u2019s Prayer, and Pope Francis had led the massive crowd in a Hail Mary and offered a final blessing \u2014 Andrea Bartoli shook the pope\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia to Rome: Sunday, September 27<\/strong><\/p>\n

The flight home on Sunday night was the leg of the trip that concerned Thomas Murray the most. They were headed not to the main airport in Rome, but to a smaller, secondary one with a shorter runway.<\/p>\n

The pope offered personal audiences to each of the crew members on the flight, and it was somewhere over the Atlantic that Murray had his. \u201cYou sit down and try not to cry right off the bat,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Vatican took photos and in the first one it looks like I\u2019m about ready to break down. He\u2019s got a big smile on his face and all he\u2019s looking at is me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray then gave the pope a patch he had designed as a memento of the trip: the pilots\u2019 names around the Vatican logo for the U.S. visit, with the pope\u2019s own motto at the bottom: Miserando atque eligendo, humble and chosen. \u201cI explained to him that we were very humbly chosen as pilots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The landing was smooth and uneventful. \u201cWhen we got to the parking spot and I shut down the engines, the whole trip washed over me. We\u2019d been up most of the night so it was mixture of relief and exhaustion,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then I turned around and His Holiness is standing there. He had come to the door to say thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin Coyne is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A host of Seton Hall community members participated in events surrounding Pope Francis’ historic visit to the U.S.<\/p>\n

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