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Fourth Sunday of Easter
13 April 2008
Dear Friends in Christ,
Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Washington on Tuesday of this week for his first papal visit to the United States. President and Mrs. Bush will receive the Holy Father at the White House, and then during three days of meetings and liturgies, Pope Benedict will speak to all of the American bishops and the presidents of the nearly 200 Catholic colleges and universities around the country. On Friday, the pope will fly to New York and address the United Nations, and on Sunday he will celebrate Mass at Yankee Stadium. A summary of the pope’s itinerary is available on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at www.usccb.org.
One purpose of the pope’s visit is the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the four dioceses of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Louisville, Kentucky (with the original cathedral being at Bardstown). In 1789, the first American diocese was erected at Baltimore, and for the next nineteen years, the Diocese of Baltimore was the sole Catholic jurisdiction in the original territory of the United States. Then in 1808, the next four dioceses were created, and Baltimore became our first archdiocese. The Diocese of Charleston followed twelve years later in 1820. It should also be noted (before Father Bart has to remind us) that the Archdiocese of New Orleans is older in origin than all of these dioceses, but it is not usually counted in the list of the oldest Sees in the United States because when the Church in Louisiana was first organized it was not in the United States!
In anticipation of his visit, the Holy Father released a statement to explain the purpose of his journey: “Following in the footsteps of my venerable predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul II, I shall come to United States of America as Pope for the first time, to proclaim this great truth: Jesus Christ is hope for men and women of every language, race, culture and social condition. Yes, Christ is the face of God present among us. Through him, our lives reach fullness, and together, both as individuals and peoples, we can become a family united by fraternal love, according to the eternal plan of God the Father.” In other words, Benedict XVI is coming to our shores in the first place as an evangelist ~ a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is important to bear this in mind during the coming week because the secular news media will simply and completely ignore the true reason for his visit and will therefore misreport the entire nature of the many appearances Pope Benedict will make in Washington and New York. Instead of the evangelical purpose of this journey, the secular media will focus on politics, internal strife in the Catholic Church, the sex abuse scandals of five years ago, and past differences of foreign policy between the Holy See and the United States. Given the spin most likely to be put on the pope’s visit, it is important that we look for every opportunity to understand more truly and deeply what the Holy Father will say during his speeches and homilies, and so I encourage you to visit good Catholic websites or watch EWTN for complete coverage of the papal visit.
Father Newman