POPE FRANCIS IN New York
Philadelphia welcomed Pope Francis Saturday with cheers, bouquets and its own brand of sacred music — the theme from “Rocky.”
A Catholic high school band blasted the rousing, brassy song from the Philadelphiaset movie as the pope arrived at the city’s airport, en route to a packed day of homilies, speeches and a turn as guest of honor among a million attendees at a starstudded outdoor concert.
There was Mass for 1,600 worshipers at the city’s cathedral and a speech about religious freedom at Independence Hall. Francis also heard Aretha Franklin and Sister Sledge at the concert, along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
First, though, the pope made an impromptu stop right on the tarmac of Philadelphia Airport.
Ordering his humble papal Fiat to a halt, Francis got out and walked over to a small boy in a wheelchair, 10yearold Michael Keating, who is severely disabled by cerebral palsy.
The Holy Father put his hand on the child’s head and kissed him as his mom broke into sobs.
“It was an unbelievable feeling,” Kristin Keating, a fourthgrade teacher, said later, adding that she felt “totally blessed and loved” when the pope grasped her hand.
Her boy suffers profound intellectual and physical impairment, and communicates only through moans and cries, she said, but “To me, in that moment, he must have felt that blessing.”
Francis was then whisked away to celebrate Mass inside the soaring Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.
Praising the beautiful architecture, the pontiff then reiterated the major themes of his US visit — urging the faithful to fight pov erty, embrace immigrants and value the “immense contributions” of women to the church.
“I would like to think, though, that the history of the Church in this city and state is really a story not about building walls, but about breaking them down. It is a story about generation after generation of committed Catholics going out to the peripheries, and building communities of worship, education, charity and service to the larger society,” he said.
After taking the popemobile on a mileandahalf spin through a thronged downtown, he spoke about religious freedom at Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were penned. On Sunday, he’ll celebrate Mass for some 1 million more worshipers before taking an 8 p.m. flight back to the Vatican.
The 78yearold pontiff, though limping as he left New York’s JFK Airport, still waved goodbye warmly to hundreds of wellwishers from the diocese of Brooklyn.
“To me,” said one of them, Carmen Baptiste, a teacher at St. Claire Catholic Academy in Rosedale, “he embodied Jesus.”