PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Vatican Radio
[with audio]
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis arrives in Philadelphia on Saturday, the final stop on his 10-day pastoral visit to Cuba and the United States. After meeting with Church leaders, visiting a high-security prison and greeting the city’s immigrant community, he’ll take part in a vigil and celebrate a concluding Mass for the 8th World Meeting of Families.
The city of Philadelphia has been preparing for this international gathering for the past three years since the venue was announced at the last World Meeting of Families in Milan in 2012. David O’Reilly is a veteran religion writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and is travelling on the papal plane throughout the Pope’s visit. Just ahead of the trip, he sat down with Philippa Hitchen to talk about the way preparations for the Meeting has transformed the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
O’Reilly says for the past 10 years the city has had “a cloud over it of the most awful kind” following two grand jury investigations into the sexual abuse crisis. Those investigations revealed not only “extensive abuse of minors but also rather dreadful cover-ups by the leadership” which made “being Catholic in this city a sort of glum, dark thing for a lot of people”.
When Archbishop Chaput arrived in the city, O’Reilly continues, he also discovered all sorts of financial difficulties, including pension debts and a Catholic education system unable to support itself. O’Reilly recalls that the archbishop admitted publically “I’m not very happy to be here” and was unprepared for the announcement three years ago that his city would be the next site for the World Meeting of Families.
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