Pope speaks of grief, unity, duty
In New York, crowds are star-struck over Francis, who visits the Sept. 11 memorial and speaks at the U.N.
NEW YORK — They came from Haiti, from Puerto Rico, from Greece and from Brooklyn.
They waved flags and Pope Francis dolls. They screamed, creating a joyful wall of sound.
The crowd that jammed Central Park to catch a brief glimpse of Pope Francis on Friday was as diverse as the city hosting him, but it was united in desire to lay eyes on the man New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has called the world’s voice of conscience and moral compass.
This city known for paying scant attention to the famous seemed star-struck.
Josette Brandow, who came to the park at 11 a.m. hoping to see the pope on his way to Mass seven hours later, held a flag and framed photos of family members who couldn’t be there. She said her neighborhood of Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn had been through a lot.
“I think people have been so beaten down over the years after 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, everyone is looking for a little peace, a little understanding,” she said.
It was just such a message the pope delivered at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on Friday morning.
“This place of death became a place of life too,” the pontiff said during a tour of the memorial. The site became “a place of saved lives, a hymn to the triumph of life over the prophets of destruction and death, to goodness over evil, to reconciliation and unity over hatred and division.”
Later events in the day were lighter, including his visit to a Catholic school in East Harlem and a quick ride past massive crowds in Central Park. Thousands converged at Madison Square Garden, where he celebrated Mass after a concert featuring Jennifer Hudson, Gloria Estefan and Harry Connick Jr.
The day began on a serious note.
At the United Nations in the morning, the pope spoke of the need for political inclusion as well as the world’s responsibility to protect the environment. He voiced his concern for those in flight from poverty and oppression and praised efforts to curb nuclear weapons, including the recent U.S. agreement with Iran.
He insisted that there was a “right of the environment” and that mankind has no authority to abuse it. “Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity,” he said.
The world’s most powerful countries, he said, were engaging in a “selfish and boundless thirst” for money by stripping away the world’s resources while exploiting the weak, the excluded and the disadvantaged.
At the site of the World Trade Center, he addressed an audience of more than 400, including Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and other religious leaders.
Francis prayed silently and laid a white rose at the edge of one of the pools built in the footprints of the twin towers, surrounded by panels inscribed with the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
“This is a place where we shed tears, we weep out of a sense of powerlessness in the face of injustice, murder and the failure to settle conflicts through dialogue,” the pontiff said. “Here we mourn the wrongful and senseless loss of innocent lives because of the inability to find solutions which respect the common good.
“This flowing water reminds us of yesterday’s tears, but also of all the tears still being shed today,” he said.
Throughout his visit, Francis has tried to bridge the divide between the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor. He has traveled among the homeless and needy.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made note of this. “You are at home not in palaces, but among the poor; not with the famous, but with the forgotten; not in official portraits, but in ‘selfies’ with young people,” Ban said.
Francis appeared most relaxed among the children at Our Lady Queen of Angels school in East Harlem, where many of the children are from poor, immigrant families. There, he was serenaded by the children singing “When the Pope Comes Marching In.” He posed for selfies and accepted gifts: a book of stories from 1,000 immigrants, a tablecloth embroidered by a mothers group, a hard hat and leather tool belt from migrant workers, and a blue soccer ball from refugee children.
Tens of thousands at Central Park waited hours for the chance to see Francis roll by in his “popemobile.” They stood behind barriers after passing through metal detectors.
Some scrambled for perches atop rocky outcrops. Some squeezed into spaces on the ground to sit as those who had been sitting struggled to stand again. Police officers stopped to take photographs, obliging people who thrust cameras at them from the crowd.
A group with a front-row spot moved aside to clear a path for a visually impaired man moving with the aid of a white cane. “I think it’s good for the people around me if I’m up front, because the pope likes to stop and talk to people with handicaps,” said the man.
It was more crowded than the worst subway car at rush hour, but nobody complained.