PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PHILADELPHIA — The pipe organ thundered during Sunday morning Masses as worshipers gathered inside the grand Basilica Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in central Philadelphia.
Outside in the hot August sun, artists and others were busily preparing an eyeful for Pope Francis’ visit here in late September.
Their project: building a makeshift grotto and displaying tens of thousands of strips of cloth in which individual visitors have written their prayers, many in English or Spanish, asking for the welfare of their families, friends, immigrants, the homeless and the hungry.
“Hopefully this will give voice to those who otherwise may not have a voice,” said Meg Saligman, the local artist coordinating the project, who said some 30,000 prayers have been contributed.
And some of those prayers are for the Catholic Church in Philadelphia — which by all accounts will need it, and not just amid the bewildering logistics of hosting the largest public events of Francis’ first visit to the United States. Francis’ appearances will include an outdoor festival on Sept. 26 and an outdoor Mass the following day.
Philadelphia is one of the cradles of American Catholicism, an immigrant gateway that weathered deadly anti-Catholic rioting in the 19th century and became home to the first American parochial school system and pioneering saints Katharine Drexel and John Neumann.
But more recently, the city became the dateline for some of the most devastating revelations of sexual abuse by priests in the world.
Grand jury reports in 2005 and 2011 found that cardinals and other clerics shifted numerous known abusers from one unsuspecting parish to another. A priest in the archdiocese’s hierarchy is behind bars for his conviction for keeping a known abuser in a parish setting where he could and did molest again.
Compounding the archdiocese’s troubles were an embezzlement conviction in 2012 of a chief financial officer involving nearly $1 million.
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