Pope tells Harlem folk: Dream on

NEW YORK—After the solemnity of his visit to Ground Zero, Pope Francis was welcomed in song and laughter on a warmly emotional visit to a Catholic school in East Harlem on Friday.

Beaming and relaxed, the 78-year-old Pope who is a week into an exhaustingly packed tour of Cuba and the United States, seemed to come alive during the hour he spent at Our Lady, Queen of Angels school.

Laughing and grasping hands, even submitting to a selfie or two, the Pontiff made his way past a line of flag-waving youths chanting “Holy Father, we love you!” They broke into a rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” as he made his way through the school’s largely black and Latino students.

Holding hands and tenderly patting heads, the Argentine Pontiff chatted with the children in Spanish, before meeting with a group of migrant workers and their families, as well as refugees, some of them in the US illegally. They presented him with gifts including a book pulling together their diverse life stories, and a set of tools on behalf of the army of day laborers who keep the Big Apple ticking.

The Pope—who says he hasn’t watched TV in decades and doesn’t know how to work a computer—even got a lesson on how to use a touchscreen from a fourth grader.

As in his historic speech to the US Congress on Thursday, Francis cited the legacy of slain US civil right leader Martin Luther King Jr.

‘Grief is palpable’

“One day he said, ‘I have a dream,’” said the Pope. “His dream was that many children like you could have access to education. He dreamt that many men and women like you could keep their head high with dignity … Don’t forget about that. Today we want to keep dreaming.”

Earlier, Francis led prayers for peace at an emotional visit to the 9/11 Memorial in New York after calling for a more humane global system at the United Nations. He spoke to relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks and first responders who fell in service, before leading a multifaith prayer and a somber moment of silence.

“Here grief is palpable,” Francis said, after viewing the reflecting pools that mark the footprints of the Twin Towers.

Flanked by a dozen religious leaders from the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Greek Orthodox traditions, Francis spoke to a crowd of about 700 people in an underground gallery. “In opposing every attempt to create a rigid uniformity, we can and must build unity on the basis of our diversity of languages, cultures and religions,” Francis said.

From Harlem, Francis headed toward Central Park, where he waved from his open-sided Jeep past a cheering, shrieking crowd and a sea of arms holding cell phones aloft. For those lucky enough to score a ticket, there was a catch: No backpacks, no chairs and no selfie sticks.

 

Life in big cities

About a half-hour before the popemobile passed through, a rainbow suddenly appeared above the crowd, which erupted in joyous “Oooohs!” and “Ahhhhhs!”

During the Mass at Madison Square Garden, Francis focused his homily on life in big cities populated by many forgotten or “second-class” citizens.

“They are the foreigners, the children who go without schooling, those deprived of medical insurance, the homeless, the forgotten elderly. These people stand at the edges of our great avenues, in our streets, in deafening anonymity,” he said in Spanish.

As Friday’s Mass came to a close with a sustained and thunderous roar of applause, the toll of the long day seemed evident as an exhausted Francis walked with assistance down the stairs of the altar. The Vatican spokesperson said Francis, who suffers from sciatica and a bad knee, is feeling the effects of missed physiotherapy appointments because he had been on the road.

Francis’ itinerary for his only full day in New York was packed with contrasts befitting a head of state dubbed the “slum pope” for his devotion to the poor. He moved from the corridors of power to the grit of the projects with lush Central Park in between.

On Friday, he had a high-powered audience at the United Nations, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary.

In his speech at the UN, the Pope described his vision of a better world, presenting his environmental mantra before world leaders in hopes of spurring concrete commitments at the upcoming climate-change negotiations in Paris, and declaring the world’s poor right to lodging, labor and land.

Boundless thirst for power

The Pope also decried the destruction of the environment through a “selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity.”

Francis’ speech, delivered in his native Spanish, received repeated rounds of applause from an audience that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Cuban President Raul Castro, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani activist shot and gravely wounded by the Taliban.

Francis also touched on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, drug trafficking and the rights of girls to an education.

Warning vs Western values

He underscored as well an “urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons” and praised the July agreement reached by the United States and other world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear program as “proof of the potential of political good will and of law, exercised with sincerity, patience and constancy.”

The Pope used his UN speech to warn against imposing Western liberal values on the rest of the world via “anomalous models and lifestyles.” His words signaled that the church was not ready to champion transgender rights, an issue of growing importance in the United States as gay equality becomes mainstream.

“We recognize a moral law written into human nature itself, one which includes the natural difference between man and woman, and absolute respect for life in all its stages and dimensions.”

Francis wraps up his six-day US trip in Philadelphia on Saturday and Sunday with a Catholic summit of families, a meeting with American bishops, a prison visit and a large outdoor Mass.

An Argentine on his first US visit, Francis will be given a stage steeped in American history. He will speak at Independence Hall, where the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and will do so from a lectern used for the Gettysburg Address, another nod to Abraham Lincoln, one of the four Americans the Pope cited as inspirations in his address to Congress.

After visiting inmates in Philadelphia’s largest jail on Saturday, he will be serenaded by Aretha Franklin and other performers at the Festival of Families, and will return there Sunday for the Mass, his last major event before leaving that night for Rome.

With Francis’ visit, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia hopes for a badly needed infusion of papal joy and enthusiasm amid shrinking membership, financial troubles and one of the worst clergy sex-abuse scandals to hit a US diocese.

The archdiocese has been the target of three grand jury investigations centered on keeping more than three dozen priests facing serious abuse accusations despite a 2002 pledge to oust any guilty clergy. The Pope is widely expected to talk privately with abuse victims over this weekend.

 

‘Who am I to judge?’

The visit is also shaping up as one of the most interesting ecclesial pairings of the Pope’s trip, as he will be hosted by Archbishop Charles Chaput, an outspoken opponent of abortion and gay marriage, who takes a harder line on church teaching in the archdiocese.

The Pope is expected to talk about religious freedom at Independence Hall and is expected to bring his message of compassion, hope and the strengthening of families to his appearances in the city. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics plan to hold separate events, including an event for gay parents and their children, on Saturday, as they advocate for broader acceptance in the church.

Francis has famously said “Who am I to judge?” when asked about a supposedly gay priest, but has also affirmed church teaching on marriage. Reports from AP and AFP