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Pope Francis speaks of breaking down walls in Philadelphia homily
By Peter Smith
[with video] After more than a year of preparations and lockdown security for one of the most highly scripted events in memory, Pope Francis tossed the script. The pontiff spoke to his largest live American audience yet Saturday night, reaching hundreds of thousands along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at the Festival of Families. This was already after a full day of speeches and a grand Mass at the cathedral in this city, where he arrived from New York by air early in the morning for the fifth day of a grueling six-day U.S. trip. This was the anchor event that had drawn Francis to America in the first place — a festival of testimony, comedy and song to cap the World Meeting of Families, an international Catholic conference. Francis had prepared a text that deftly slid past hot-button controversies over the family, such as same-sex marriage, and instead focused on the intense threat to families based on poverty. But something changed. It may have been the music — gospel singer and preacher’s kid Aretha Franklin and her spectacularly soulful riff on “Amazing Grace.” Or other classical performances and hymnody. But when the pontiff came to the podium, despite whatever strain his breakneck itinerary may be placing on his 78-year-old body with a partial lung, he gestured animatedly and spoke forcefully. And he embedded a sophisticated lesson in trinitarian theology into basic aphorisms, and a few jokes. Thanking the artists for having “gladdened us with your art,” the Spanish-speaking pontiff went on to say through an interpreter that “beauty leads us to God.” He continued: “And the truth takes us to God, because God also is truth.” And these make “us good persons because God is goodness. ... All that is beautiful leads us to God.” He recalled a child asked him once what God was doing before the creation of the world, and he concluded: “Before creating the world, God loved, because God is love.” “All the love that God has in himself,” within the three persons of the divine Trinity, he said, is given to families. “Family is really family when it is able to open its arms and receive all that love,” he said. Circling back, he continued: “In the family, truth, goodness and beauty can grow,” he said. He quipped that some could object that he is speaking idealistically because “you are not married.” He acknowledged family life is difficult. “Sometimes plates can fly and children bring headaches,” he said. “I won’t speak about mothers-in-law.” But even in troubled families “there is always life,” he said, citing the resurrection of Jesus even after the suffering of crucifixion. Families are “factories of hope.” God, he said, sent Jesus not to live in a palace but to a family His voice grew even more forceful as he concluded: “Two things we really have to take care of. The children and the grandparents. The children are the future. The grandparents are the living memory of the family. ... They transmitted the faith to us.” A society that “doesn’t know how to look after its children [or] ... its grandparents is a people that has no future. It doesn’t have strength or the memory to go forward.” After more music and a fireworks display, he exited via the popemobile through thinning but cheering crowds on a chilly moonlit night. Earlier in the evening, Pittsburgh teen music star Jackie Evancho was among the performers, wowing the crowd with pristine solos. Her song list included “When You Wish Upon a Star,” “Ave Maria,” “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” and “The Music of the Night.” The pope’s trip concludes today with a Mass before a projected million people along the Parkway. Here is a chronicle of Philadelphia on the first day of the visit of Pope Francis, who arrived Saturday morning from New York and leaves tonight for Rome.
7:20 a.m. One woman from the Dominican Republic said she had been out since 4 a.m. Asked where they’re from, the early birds replied: “South Carolina! Chicago! Phoenix! Colombia! Two blocks away!” Some had slept out overnight. The security presence was already heavy, with officials ranging from city police to the U.S. Border Patrol on hand to screen everyone entering the Parkway area. The Mass was primarily for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, including priests, religious sisters and lay leaders, as well as the bishops of Pennsylvania and other representatives of dioceses surrounding Philadelphia. Those outside the cathedral had many reasons for being there, and some were critical. Miguel Ortiz was with his daughter Carolina. They are protesting the closing of their parish, Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, which served the Spanish community. Mr. Ortiz said he is on the sixth day of a hunger strike. The parish is still open as a shrine, but Mr. Ortiz said it was merged into the cathedral congregation and that it’s difficult for many elderly parishioners without cars to get there, even though it’s less than a mile away. “It’s great we have the pope here,” he said, but “we are trying to get the attention of Archbishop [Charles] Chaput. ... As soon as the pope leaves Philadelphia, the sellings [of church buildings] are going to continue.” Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests were standing in quiet witness outside the cathedral, calling on the Catholic Church to do more to reform over the scandals of sexual abuse by priests. Barbara Dorris of SNAP said she has been unimpressed so far with Pope Francis’ words here, praising bishops for their reforms.
10:30 a.m. Pope Francis was greeted outdoors by rapturous cheers and indoors by the hundreds of outstretched arms taking cell-phone images as he blessed people with the sign of the cross. The service was accompanied by an aural feast of organ and choral music. Prayers and readings were in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Latin. The cathedral was filled to its capacity of 2,400. Pope Francis voiced hope that the Philadelphia Catholic story would be one “not about building walls, but about breaking them down.” He spoke in a sanctuary where the original walls were built tall and the windows were put high on the walls in defense against 19th-century violence against Catholic immigrants. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia, one of the oldest and largest in the nation, reports having about 1.4 million Catholics in more than 200 parishes in its five-county area. Striking some of his most familiar themes, Francis paid tribute to the spiritual and charitable heritage of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. “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, according to the translation of his homily in his native Spanish. He recounted the story of St. Katherine Drexel, who as a young Philadelphia heiress appealed to Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to send missionaries for America’s underserved populations. Francis made pointed eye contact with the congregation and voiced the staccato phrase, “Y tu? (And you?)” when he repeated his predecessor’s response to Drexel, asking what she was going to do about it. The encounter inspired Drexel to become a religious sister, found a religious order and pour her fortune into Catholic work among African-Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “First, those words — ‘What about you?’ — were addressed to a young person, a young woman with high ideals, and they changed her life,” the pontiff said. “How many young people in our parishes and schools have the same high ideals, generosity of spirit, and love for Christ and the Church! Do we challenge them?” He also touted Drexel as an example of the long tradition of ministry by American Catholic lay people, and he urged more of the same. As for the more recent history of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Pope Francis did not speak of the crisis of sexual abuse here. Bishops have said they expect Francis, like Pope Benedict XVI before him, will meet privately with sexual-abuse survivors before the end of his trip on Sunday. Before he exited through a side chapel where people had been watching the Mass on a large screen, Pope Francis asked the congregation to pray for him. He stopped to greet people in the front row and bless people in wheelchairs.
12:50 p.m. Hours before the pope’s visit here, people were steadily streaming along barricades. There were nuns in habits, children in strollers, a little boy in suit and tie, middle-aged women in shirts that read: “This girl loves Pope Francis.” They walked past metal fencing with signs noting that drones are prohibited, where every so many feet orange-clad volunteers stood giving directions. Volunteers and siblings Justin and Maryrose Owens arrived at their corner around 6:30 a.m., and said they have seen a steady stream of people since then. “Everybody is in a very good mood,” he said. A short distance away, a large group from St. Rocco Catholic Church in Avondale, a parish designated to serve the Hispanic community, walked toward the entry. By an entry point, Zac Coumbassa, Abdul Diallo and Bouba Bangoura held up the T-shirts they had printed at their West Philadelphia shop for the occasion. People eyed the shirts, then approached to ask the price. “He’s a very powerful figure,” Mr. Coumbassa said of the man on their shirts. The pope’s visit “might bring some hope and joy to people, to help the country.” Mr. Diallo was impressed by the level of security surrounding the event. With camouflage-uniformed men on many street corners, the scene, he said, was “like when the army takes over.” People on bicycles rode down the middle of the streets, and hardly any cars could be heard. By an entrance, Alan and Marta Olenick stood over a map of Philadelphia. They had booked their train from Connecticut in January, but tickets to the events themselves ran out so quickly that the couple was left without any. “A simple glimpse is what we’re trying to do,” Alan Olenick said. But, Marta Olenick said, “even if we don’t see the pope, we participate in this friendly atmosphere.”
4:45 p.m. At the beginning of his remarks, Pope Francis said it was a highlight to “stand here, before ... the birthplace of the United States of America.” While he talked about immigration, he focused on religious liberty. He made a statement about a growing and changing country, saying, “The history of this nation is also the tale of a constant effort, lasting to our own day, to embody those lofty principles” of the Declaration of Independence “in social and political life,” principles that he said “have inspired peoples throughout the world to fight for the freedom to live in accordance with their dignity. ... History also shows that these or any truths must continually be reaffirmed, reappropriated and defended.” Speaking in Spanish to about 50,000 people who had obtained free tickets in advance, Pope Francis, the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, mentioned immigration and even near his conclusion said to “members of America’s large Hispanic population, as well as representatives of recent immigrants to the United States” that “I greet all of you with particular affection!” He told them not to be discouraged by their struggles and “never to be ashamed of your traditions ... what is part of you, your life blood,” and to give “vibrant faith ... family life, and all those other values which you have inherited.” (The English translation was provided by the United States Council of Catholic Bishops.) The pope spoke in front of the building where the Declaration of Independence was signed during the Revolutionary War in 1776 and the Constitution afterward in 1787. He stood on the podium from which President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, 118 miles away. But he did not quote Lincoln directly, whom he already recognized in his speech before Congress. He moved away from the times of the nation’s founding and its Civil War to say, “We need but look at history, especially the history of the last century, to see the atrocities perpetrated by systems which claimed to build one or another ‘earthly paradise’ by dominating peoples, subjecting them to apparently indisputable principles and denying them any kind of rights.” He said that, instead of those paradises, “Our rich religious traditions seek to offer meaning and direction.” The pope spoke of “the right to worship God,” that “we are called to acknowledge an Other,” and that “it is imperative that the followers of the various religions join their voices in calling for peace, tolerance and respect for the dignity and rights of others.” And he praised “the Quakers who founded Philadelphia” for convictions that “led them to found a colony which would be a haven of religious freedom and tolerance.”
6:15 p.m. At an afternoon Mass celebrated by Bishop David Zubik, visitors from the Pittsburgh contingent in gold-and-black shirts filled the pews. Others in the overflow crowd stood in the back by rows of candles and on the sides by stained-glass windows. In his homily, Bishop Zubik told those congregated that “since Pope Francis landed in our country on Tuesday, the one message that you and I have been hearing from him is that we need to make sure that not only our world but our hearts have to get a lot bigger.” He told those in the pews that both he and they would find it exhilarating to be in the presence of Pope Francis this weekend. “But the question is what will you and I do when he takes off on that plane back to Rome, and as we board our buses and our planes and our cars and go back home?” Bishop Zubik asked. “What will we do about what happened here this week? Will this simply be a nice memory, something to put in our scrapbook or send as part of our computer messages to our friends? Or will we let what happened here this week, and the message that our dear God has sent us through our Holy Father, truly be implanted in our hearts?” After Mass, Bishop Zubik said the pope’s message had continued “to be consistent in his support of every aspect of the church.” After praising the work of religious women earlier in the trip, Saturday morning the pope spoke of the service of lay people. “He took the whole perspective of how are we going to take the opportunities and the faith that we’ve been given and use them to better every person’s life.” Outside the church after Mass, members of the Pittsburgh group stuck around to eat boxed lunches, 973 of which had been delivered, according to Belinda Lewis-Held, who organized the trip for people from Pittsburgh, Altoona, Johnstown and Erie. Leah Mansfield, 10, a fourth-grader at St. Gregory Catholic School in Zelienople, was on the trip with her grandparents. “It’s really exciting,” she said. “But it’s kind of crazy with all the people.” Sitting on the church steps, Phyllis Haney, an Ambridge resident who directs the Office for the Protection of Children and Young People of the Pittsburgh diocese, said the trip has been “a jolt to my faith.” “Pope Francis is really challenging us to be open, to open the doors to those who have felt the doors were closed to them,” Ms. Haney said. “We’ve been a little bit exclusive at times. We’re good at saying you can’t go to communion, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. And people have felt alienated. Pope Francis is really going out of his way to say all are welcome, there is a place for everyone, open the doors.” Standing outside the church, Ellen Mady of Scott, who was there with her husband and three young children, echoed the sentiment. “He’s a wonderful pope, the pope for our times,” she said. “He’s very focused on love and mercy, which is something that’s needed not only in the church but in the whole world.” As Helen Kulish of Jefferson Hills spoke of the trip, tears came to her eyes. The experience, she said, has been surreal. “To have a pope on our home land, in our home state, is an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said. 7:30 p.m. Festival of Families Not mere thrills or enthusiasm but rapturous joy showed in the faces of the teens, aided by the glow of their cell-phone cameras, as their tiring four-hour wait along the barricades was rewarded by Pope Francis’ passing in his popemobile. “I saw Pope Francis!” shouted Jake Hayes, a senior and one of a large group of students from St. Joseph High School in Natrona Heights that traveled by bus here for the climactic weekend of Pope Francis’ historic American visit. “I always knew he cared about the future of the church,” he said. “That’s why this trip was so special to us, because we are the future of the church. He cares about us.” Added Allison Wygonik: “I feel closer to God.” And the 78-year-old pontiff showed his concern about that future, offering a passionate defense of the embattled modern family before hundreds of thousands along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Festival of Families was the culmination of the days-long World Meeting of Families, the anchor event for the pontiff’s first visit to the United States. For hours, the hundreds of thousands lined the barricades, watched earlier papal appearances on Jumbotrons and soaked in an all-star lineup of entertainment. Contact: psmith@post-gazette.com
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