c. 2007 Religion News Service
BALTIMORE _ Pope Benedict XVI will make his first papal visit to the U.S. next April, stopping at the United Nations in New York and the White House in Washington, his U.S. representative announced Monday (Nov. 12).
Vatican ambassador Archbishop Pietro Sambi, addressing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting here, said Benedict’s visit is scheduled for April 15-20.
The pontiff, who turns 81 on April 16, will visit only New York and Washington, according to Sambi, though a number of U.S. cities had publicly lobbied for a papal visit.
“The pope will not travel much but will address himself to the people of the United States and the whole of the Catholic church,” Sambi said. “We should make the visit of the pope a moment of assurance for those who have left the church in the last year, and an invitation to return.”
Benedict’s visit is timed to mark the establishment of the first dioceses in the United States nearly 200 years ago, Sambi said, and may “revive the urgency” of the Catholic mission in America.
“I propose to make this meeting of Peter among us for the church in American a new usefulness, a new spring and a new Pentecost,” Sambi said, referring to Benedict as the successor to St. Peter.
The trip will be Benedict’s first as pope and the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis in 1999.
In addition to celebrating Masses at New York’s Yankee Stadium and the Washington Nationals’ new ballpark, currently under construction, Benedict will visit Ground Zero in New York, with the families of those who perished there on Sept. 11, 2001.
Though the pontiff’s advanced age precludes him from touring the U.S. extensively, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington said the pope is reaching out symbolically to all Americans by visiting the nation’s capital.
“It’s his way of saying this is a visit to the entire country,” Wuerl said.
The pope’s schedule as released Monday is as follows:
April 15: Benedict arrives in Washington.
April 16, the pope’s birthday: Benedict will visit President Bush at the White House; later in the day he is to meet with U.S. bishops at the Bailica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
April 17: Benedict will celebrate a public Mass at the Washington Nationals’ stadium; later he will meet with Catholic university presidents and diocesan heads of education and attend an interreligious event at the John Paul II Cultural Center.
April 18: The pope will address the United Nations in New York. Later, he will attend an ecumenical event at an unnamed parish in New York.
April 19: Benedict will celebrate a Mass with priests, deacons and members of religious orders at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and later, attend a youth event at St. Joseph Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y.
April 20: The pope will visit Ground Zero, and then celebrate a public Mass at Yankee Stadium.
Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., the outgoing president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, said a telegram had been fired off from Baltimore Monday morning saying the bishops “already look forward joyfully” to the visit.
In other items, the bishops issued a statement on the Iraq war, calling for a “responsible transition.”
“Our country needs a new direction to reduce the war’s deadly toll and to bring our people together to deal with the conflict’s moral dimensions,” reads a draft of the letter, which will be issued by Skylstad but approved by all 280 bishops. “Our nation needs a new bipartisan approach to Iraq policy based on honest and civil dialogue.”
“The statement resists the temptation to say, `We told you so,”’ said Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, Fla., head of the bishops’ international affairs committee. “The fact that we invaded Iraq means we have assumed a … moral obligation to the Iraqi people.”
But the statement doesn’t go far enough, said Bishop Michael D. Pfeiffer of San Angelo, Texas.
“We have a quagmire in Iraq; it’s hard to determine which course to follow,” he said. “We need to speak more clearly as bishops for how we see the situation.”
Pfeifer also called for a “national day of prayer and remembrance” over the Iraq war during Advent, the four-week period before Christmas.
Other bishops, including Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Chicago, said the bishops should take a harder line on Iran.
“Our statements … tend to focus on American action and the need for American restraint in the Middle East,” Paprocki said, without “adequately account(ing) for Islamic jihadism.”
Later this week, the bishops will approve a set of moral guidelines for Catholics making political decisions and elect a new president, among other items.
KRE/LF END BURKE
